Legacy on rent

Four generations of the family of Sir Sobha Singh, the builder of Delhi, live in 84 flats at Sujan Singh Park, making it an unusual joint family that is independent and nuclear

A stone’s throw from Khan Market, the upscale shopping destination in New Delhi, writer, journalist, historian, raconteur and nature lover Khushwant Singh died peacefully at home last week. His house is on the ground floor of Sujan Singh Park, blocks of red-brick buildings that look over a park, where young boys and girls, minded by their nannies, play in the evening. Each ground-floor flat has its own small garden. Those on the second and third floors overlook verdant trees: palash, neem, gulmohar. There is an old-world charm about the buildings with tall foyers and grand archways. The staircases are wide and the rooms inside are spacious. The ceilings are tall — just the antithesis of new-age designer flats. While Khushwant’s books and other possessions will go to his two children, son Rahul and daughter Mala, the two-bedroom flat will be a different matter: it won’t have a new owner, though it won’t go to Rahul and Mala. That’s because their father never owned this house. This was his family house, yet he lived here as a tenant, paying a monthly rent.

Quaint Sujan Singh Park is made up of 84 flats (one- and two-bedroom flats, arranged in seven blocks). There is a busy road that runs through the blocks — the Subramania Bharti Marg — that deposits shoppers to Khan Market, joggers to the Lodhi Park, networkers to the India International Centre and devotees to the Sai Baba temple. Four blocks, including the one where Khushwant lived, are on one side, and the other three are on the other along with the Vivanta by Taj hotel. This residential complex was built by Sir Sobha Singh (1890-1978, Khushwant’s father) as Delhi’s first housing complex in 1945. Sir Sobha was one of the makers of Lutyens’ Delhi and he named it after his father. He provided space for a lift shaft in each block, two servant quarters and a garage for each flat and a carpenter, electrician and plumber on call at all times. “The buildings were so beautifully designed that they sway and not remain static when an earthquake occurs. This prevents the blocks from coming crashing down,” says Malvika Singh, the publisher of Seminar magazine and Sir Sobha’s grand-daughter-in-law. At the moment four generations of the Singh family live here. Among them are businessmen, scholars, retirees and housewives.

 

 

The flats were first used by the British as barracks for soldiers during World War II. Once the war ended, the flats were to be returned to Sir Sobha. While he divided all his properties among his five children during his lifetime, Sujan Singh Park was meant to be shared family space, in which each of his four sons and one daughter, and their children, received a flat. But soon after Partition in 1947, several families which came to Delhi were either given accommodation on rent in Sujan Singh Park, either by the government or by Sir Sobha. As the years passed, only a handful of these occupants returned these flats to the family. Some of these are still with the government. These flats stick out like a sore thumb: the wall paint is peeling and they have the usual graying air of government flats. Malvika, never the one to mince words, calls them “encroachers”, occupying property that did not belong to them and was only rented out to them for an interim period. She adds that “these governmentwallahs don’t even like paying basic maintenance for the service staff, whitewashing, sewage et cetera. If the Sobha Singh family wasn’t living there, the complex would be a complete shambles.”

Such occupancy issues finally led to Sobha Singh’s son, Brigadier Gurbux Singh (he too died recently), taking up the case in court. He represented Sir Sobha Singh and Sons, a private company of which all of Sobha Singh’s descendants are shareholders. One of the occupants was an aunt of Malvika’s. Malvika says she once jokingly told her that she would only vacate the flat when she died. But when the court ruled in favour of the family, she vacated the flat, which was allotted to one of the family members.

But as the family expanded, how were these flats to be allocated? The solution to this conundrum came in the form of a board resolution around 1990, which named all descendants of Sobha Singh up to the fourth generation. And each member of the family, whether born a boy or girl, would be entitled to a flat. A family tree was built in order to decide the entitlement. Whenever a flat falls vacant, the topmost on the waiting list gets it. There is no bad blood. Malvika endorses this system of allocating flats in a predetermined order because it prevents family squabbles. “Each tenant of the flats respects the memory of our grandfather’s efforts to keep the family conflict-free. Even when Sir Sobha had to sell his properties after Independence to pay the high property taxes, he decided against any court cases against the government to maintain his dignity and respect for the law of the land.”

 

Sir Sobha’s grandson, Preminder Singh, now heads Sobha Singh and Sons, looking after the allocation, maintenance and presiding over the annual general meetings of the company’s shareholders. For thirty-seven year-old Sanam Singh, a lawyer by profession, Sobha Singh’s great-granddaughter and the latest to get a flat, these meetings are like large family gatherings, where the family enjoy a potluck party with dhokla and sandwiches. The rent that each tenant pays is decided by the rent-control bylaws, which brings it to a little less than Rs 1,000 per month. Over and above that, each household pays a voluntary development fund for maintenance. Located across Golf Links, where monthly rentals hover around Rs 5 lakh a month for a similar space, these apartments in Lutyens’ Delhi are truly Sir Sobha’s big gift for the family. Interestingly, occupants are allowed to sub-let their flats, so long as they don’t charge a higher rent. It’s therefore not possible to commercialise the inheritance. One such tenant is furniture designer Michael Aram, who lives in a ground-floor flat allotted to Preminder.

Sanam says the board resolution on flat allotment is absolutely water-tight about family squabbles and conflicts. “If you’re at the top of the list, you have to accept the first flat that becomes vacant, irrespective of its size or its location. The resolution is very clear that if someone raises her voice against a flat, her name is moved to the bottom of the list, which could, in essence, mean a wait of several years. So far, this situation hasn’t arisen.” She was allotted the flat in 2012, after which she spent months renovating it with the help of a heritage architect. “We have to get the approval of the board before making any change to the flat and it is mandatory to hire an architect who understands heritage buildings.” She flips through the blueprint which she put in place for her renovation plans, explaining how she has kept the original woodwork, jharokhas and fireplace intact, while making it more secure for a woman to live alone. “I could’ve bought a small flat in Gurgaon for the money I spent on renovating this flat, but I chose to nourish my legacy. The furniture, including the dining table, is all a part of what I inherited from my grandparents. The props I had worked well with the history of the place,” she reminisces in her drawing room which overlooks banana trees in the front and neem trees at the back.

Like her aunt Malvika, Sanam feels that life in Sujan Singh Park is both “secure and free”. “It’s like living in a beehive; we’re all one large family with independent lives. And you have to live in Sujan Singh Park, go away for a while and come back to it to understand its history, the privilege that came with one man’s vision and the unmistakable sense of community.”