SONYA FATAH

SONYA FATAH
THE TORONTO STAR, August 16, 2008

MUMBAI–”Antilia” isn’t the only skyscraper dotting the city’s long, curving, southern coastline. But this particular tower, on Altamont Rd. – one of the wealthiest and most expensive residential streets in all of India – is home to a particularly sensational project. India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is building this 27-floor, 173-metre skyscraper as a home for his family.

Forbes rated the 50-year-old Ambani, India’s wealthiest industrialist and petrochemicals czar, as the world’s fifth richest man, with an estimated net worth of $43 billion. The half-constructed Antilia, named after a mythical Greek island, is Ambani’s demonstration of what he can do with that wealth.

India’s steadily rising financial elite lives like the rich and famous anywhere, but in Mumbai, where some 60 per cent of the population live in slums, Ambani’s fancy skyscraper isn’t leaving everyone breathless with awe.

With property prices going wild in the Indian financial capital, many residents fear the brash demonstration of wealth will rapidly destroy the charming architecture and culture of the city. But, for many young Indians, inspired by recent exhibitions of wealth, the scale of Antilia is a welcome change, a sign of India’s rise as a 21st-century financial city.

With shantytowns and slums within walking distance, Antilia has its share of critics.

“I just see it as a kind of rather public and vulgar kind of exhibitionism,” said Ram Chandra Guha, an Indian historian and social commentator. “It is in poor taste. It is telling the other citizens of Bombay (Mumbai) – I don’t care for you. I am so much greater than you.”

The new building is said to be a “green project,” complete with hanging gardens and large garden rooftop spaces. But it also features gymnasiums, rooftop helipads, six floors of parking, and an ice room where Ambani and his family – his wife, mother and three children – can cool off.

Newspaper reports stated that the project, slated at $2 billion, is the most expensive private home ever built. But sources close to the project insist the numbers have been inflated. Fearing negative publicity, the family has clammed up.

The project has caused concern among those who want to protect the architectural heritage of a city known to have one of the world’s largest surviving art deco neighbourhoods.

It doesn’t help that the 4,500-sq.-ft. plot of land upon which Antilia stands was bought way below market price from a trust that originally planned to build an orphanage for Mumbai’s countless orphans.

“Half of the city lives in slums. There is a desperate need to rectify that situation,” said a senior engineer who did not want to be named. “I think (Antilia is) disgraceful and disgusting … There’s a degree of callousness which I think is unbelievable… Even (Greek tycoon Aristotle) Onassis’s yacht wasn’t that lavish.”

But as the well-travelled and wealthy flock to Mumbai for jobs and to settle, many more Antilias – tall, spacious and offering views of the Arabian Sea – are on the rise.

“As an architect, I am concerned, because a project like Antilia appears to be a green project, but it is not green building,” said Akhter Chauhan, director of the Rizvi College of Architecture in Mumbai. “We like to promote sustainable architecture. Architecture that is humane and that is more humble.”

The Ambani family isn’t winning any points for humble living. But that’s okay with some Indians, who see Ambani as a pioneer leading India’s new generation of entrepreneurs and industrialists to believe they, too, can follow in his footsteps.

The Indian public, after all, has long held the Ambanis’ rags-to-riches story in awe. Ambani’s father, Dhirubhai, came from a poor, rural background, but used his business acumen and politicking skills to ensure his polyester business thrived at a time when the biggest companies were in the hands of the country’s elite old families.

Although many analysts later accused the senior Ambani of using underhanded, sometimes desperate and dirty, means to succeed, many Indians also saw him as a symbol of a new India in which futures didn’t have to be determined by class, caste and background.

Still, some see it as a nasty reminder of colonial life.

“The British and the maharajas used to live with great opulence,” said Pankaj Joshi, a conservation architect. “They had opal rooms and crystal rooms and pearl rooms. That was the lavishness of those days. It took a different form. Today, these businessmen are our new colonial rulers.”

THE AMBANI FAMILY
Mukesh Ambani, 50, is the son of the late Dhirubhai Ambani, India’s first successful rags-to-riches entrepreneur, who emerged from a small town in Gujarat state and gradually built his fortune in the polyester business.

Dhirubhai’s success earned him a great deal of respect in Indian business circles because he made his way through a tightly woven bureaucracy that was unfriendly to new entrants. His tactics – winning lucrative government licences by bribing high-level officers – were detailed by Australian writer Hamish MacDonald in The Polyester Prince. (The book is banned in India for its exposé.)

Dhirubhai’s company, Reliance Industries, which became publicly listed in 1977, is today worth a little over $85 billion.

Dhirubhai’s male heirs – his sons Mukesh and Anil, now 48 – fought each other for control over Dhirubhai Ambani’s empire after his death in 2002. Mukesh and Anil’s mother brokered a settlement between the brothers in 2005.

For years, Dhirubhai Ambani, his sons and their families, including senior staff at Reliance, lived in Sea Wind, a 22-floor building in Cuffe Parade, an elite residential neighbourhood in southern Mumbai. After the father’s death, when infighting between the two brothers made it difficult to live under the same roof, Mukesh Ambani, pictured below, set about building Antilia, where he will live with his children, wife, left, and mother, right.

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