The Daily Rupee, from The IndiaPay Times satire desk. This is satire.
Rate of the day:
₹94.25PLANO, TX. A local software manager spent Sunday evening trying to locate a plot of land he bought in 2009, after confirming that the only landmark on his documents, a large banyan tree, was removed in 2016.
“The papers say ‘behind the banyan tree,'” he told relatives on a video call, holding a folder up to the camera. “When I bought it, they said this tree would outlive all of us. What to do.”
The caretaker, reached by phone, confirmed the tree is gone. In its place stand a tea stall and a shop selling mobile phone covers. He described the plot as “near the tea stall, or near where the previous tea stall was, or one more tea stall down.”
The man’s mother, who has posted a photo of the plot to the family WhatsApp group every few months since 2014, resent the latest one at 4:10 AM India time, captioned “Your land. Looking good.” The photo shows a field, a fence, and one goat. Family members compared it with earlier photos and agreed the goat is different each time, but the field is “emotionally the same.”
Relatives then turned to a cousin in Sharjah, who has not missed a monthly transfer to the family in 15 years and is the only person in the group known to have stood on the plot. He visited in 2017 on a short trip home and took 14 photographs. Twelve show his shoes. Two show a wall that may or may not be the right wall.
“I stood on it,” the cousin said in a voice note. “Or beside it. It felt like ours.” Family members called the voice note “the most conclusive evidence so far.”
A senior fellow at a land studies institute nobody could name said the situation is common. “Most NRI plots exist in three forms: a document, a photograph, and a feeling,” he said. “Only the feeling has never needed renewal.”
The man said he plans to confirm the boundaries on his next India trip, which he described as “soon, maybe after this project.” The same sentence has appeared in his family messages since 2019.
Asked whether he would ever consider selling, he looked at the folder for some time.
“It is the only place that still has my name on it,” he said. “Also the goat.”
At press time, he had asked his mother for a new photo, this time with the tea stall in frame, “for reference.” She replied with the same photo and a note that the goat was looking well.
Not satire: if you own property in India, or are thinking of buying some from abroad, here is an honest look at what it really involves. Our guide, Should NRI Buy Property in India? An Honest Take, has the real numbers.
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