Home on the strange

Ruchir Joshi, who has moved on from the cooler-only norm (but still has just the one AC), decodes the room on the roof:

“Barsaati???” My friend cried in horror, “Good god, you never told me you lived in a barsaati! That’s quite different! Everyone knows you need a minimum of two ACs to dent a barsaati.”
And there, I thought, you have it. Academic, intellectual, arty, media-centric New Delhi in a nutshell. For, from this point, the following dominos of logic fall tippety-tap: what do you have to do, to afford two air-conditioners and their appendage of the electricity bill? And then, if you can afford two ACs, why would you stay stuck in a barsaati? And, once you are doing enough to be able to get out into a “proper” apartment or house, (often involving the jettisoning of more central areas for the sprawl of trans-Jamuna, DLF et al), then the rest of it comes naturally.