Ashish Kumar, Scientific Consultant (Genomics and Bioinformatics)
Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden & Visiting Scientist, Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, New Delhi, India.
Finalizing a home where we can rest after a hard day’s work is one big decision, perhaps to be taken once in a lifetime! And for those of us, who love to work hard and play equally hard but within a limited budget, deciding to live in an apartment complex is a no-brainer. So, when one of the biggest builders of NCR region named DLF, launched an apartment complex in Bangalore, I still vividly remember my excitement at making my first booking payment. Fast forward more than a decade and I was readying to move-in. I’d tried to keep myself updated on the local issues via emails, but the increasing multitude of digital community invites and the difficulty on getting some maintenance support remotely had been worrying me. After the harrowing experience at possession, I was desperate to eschew the cascade of bad fortune with this first fixed asset of my life!
I arrived with my family about six months ago and I was glad to discover a thriving and vibrant community, with a lot of open space and greenery. Further exploration made us discover a good growing tree canopy, multiple children play area, sufficient visitor parking bays and a reasonably evolving self-sufficient local infrastructure. It took me a few phone calls and visits to the maintenance team to resolve some of the pressing apartment issues, that had previously not been addressed by the JLL or the previous committee members, so that has been comforting for a start! The systems and processes laid out seems generally well planned and working satisfactorily, be it the security services, the water procurement, the electricity backup or the infrastructure management.
It is a humongous community with an extensive spread from kids to senior citizens; and catering to their varied requirements needs a huge balancing act, which can keep evolving as per the demand. Be it the activity clubs for kids, or the badminton/TT/volleyball/cricket teams for the active lot or the geriatric yoga clubs or evening congregations, etc. – there is something for everyone and that really complements an active community living.
We do need our clubhouse possession urgently now, that would, apart from the obvious, bring the residents much more into physical interactions and hopefully tone-down some of the virtual banters in Telegram/WhatsApp platforms. After living for over a decade and a half in UK, I was somewhat nervous about having a parallel base here, as I dive deep into forging new Indo-EU scientific collaborations.
As of now, it has been comforting to see my kids adapting to everything here, including the severe lockdown! And the handling of that lockdown for a large community like Westend Heights Bangalore, has been laudable.
The desire to excel and experience the best is a never-ending desire but given the humbling experience of this ongoing pandemic for mankind, let’s pause here for a rethink and realign our energy and motivations to forge a much stronger community and experience a fulfilled living.
Considering that I’m living in the Silicon Valley of India, where the residents generally tend to be professionally accomplished, technology savvy and hungry for growth, continued improvement and optimization of existing systems could easily be taken for granted. But in our zeal for excellence, let us keep working together and strive towards making this place even better and an example community. Let us pledge together to equip that dream with a set of rejuvenated wings to glide through bigger challenges.
Westend Heights Bengaluru 