Aurangabad : Early days 10

During all these happenings on the professional side, a major event happened in my personal life - I got married. It was not something that I had planned but when I saw my wife-to-be for the first time, I fell head-over-heels in love with her. It was at one of the events planned by my family for an arranged marriage, though I was not prepared financially for the marriage and had no idea at the time what getting married would mean in practical terms. My wife-to-be was totally unaware of the fact that she was tying her knot with an upcoming, struggling architect and had not even had the opportunity to have a good look at me at the event. I was lucky on both counts.

The first year of marriage was fraught with difficulties of space, finances and relations. It was only after my son Pranav was born that we rented a house big enough to accommodate the family properly. Sanju had already started working at AAMCOL and my practice picked up a bit to give us a certain stability now. The days were full of activities, Pranav was the greatest, nicest and the best looking grandson ever, so much so that my mother was after me to buy a camera specifically for him, which I got for him by travelling all the way to Mumbai. It was at this juncture that I started thinking in terms settling down at Aurangabad by having a place of my own.

Though my experiments with collective housing by buying a plot with a few friends at Khadakeshwar resulted in a great deal of waste of time, money and efforts, it also gave me a great deal of insight in human relations, and a place to stay for a while. But the experience gave me the realisation that this kind of thing was not going to work for me, and I started looking for alternatives.

Around this time, two of my friends, Ashok Mudkavi and Mohan Phulambrikar were looking for plots to build their own houses, and as a consultant, I made many a visit with them looking for a suitable location. We zeroed in on the new settlement planned by CIDCO at N-4, as the prices were within their reach, and moreover, the surrounding development was assured, unlike the areas in Corporation area. I also decided to purchase a plot with them, but even at Rs. 10.00 per square foot price, I could not afford to buy a whole plot and I managed to convince Suresh Karkare to share the price and half the plot. It took us about 5 months to collect money for the purchase of the plot, and then about an year to collect a lot more money to build the house, as housing loan was very difficult to obtain at the time.

As luck would have it, LIC started its operations in housing finance at this time, and we became one of their first customers. Our loan file number in LIC was 25. But more than the loan part, it started a new career for me. After finding out that I was an architect, the loan officer inquired if I was interested in becoming their valuer. I had done a few valuations earlier for the properties under acquisition, and was conversant with the process, which came in handy and I became a panel valuer for LIC, and later LIC Housing Finance Ltd.

Anyway with LIC and many other market borrowings, we managed to build the house and moved in the new house in 1990. My struggling days were over, or at least we all thought so, little knowing the challenges that lay ahead.