Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Photo: K. Ananthan

In style One more place to show off class

In one corner of the city is the masterpiece from Spain that costs Rs. 4.55 lakhs. Before you start thinking about a certain somebody’s painting or a sculpture, it is available at a bathroom fittings store. Phut. But step up close to the Lumino for your morning thing and the flap opens as if by magic. Sit down with your paper and you have a digital panel that keeps your seat warm, it will wash you and dry you (oh the water can be mixed to the right temperature) and when you get up and walk away it will flush and close itself.

In another part of the city is a similar thing called Neorest from a Japanese company. This one has images of what it can do like the car AC vents (get the idea?).

The masterpieces from Spain are from a company called Roca. While the Japanese ones are from a company called Toto.

Between the two and a few other companies, the loaded Hyderabadi is getting a taste of luxury in the loo starting at upwards of Rs. 10,000 and going into lakhs.

“Most of the products are getting sold for projects. But the real expensive ones are being preferred by individuals who come and make their pick. We have sold about 12 Neorest units,” says the salesperson at the Toto showroom in Banjara Hills. The mid-range loos have hydraulic flaps that don’t make noise when you open the chamber pot or close it.

The best place to get an idea of the changing loo preferences are the realty brochures. Lanco Hills promises: “Ceramic ware of superior brands like American Standard/Toto or equivalent except in maid’s bathroom. CP fittings of superior brand like Toto, Jaguar or equivalent in bathrooms and kitchen except maid’s bathroom.”

Poor maid no luxury for her. It is not just Lanco Hills, the other upscale projects coming up in the city too have good detailing about the toilets and the fittings. Not just the functioning part, but the brand part.

“Roca has a tied up with Parryware and there is a word of mouth publicity for the good movement of the product,” says Satish Kumar, who details the products and explains the reason for the price. The white of the sanitary fitting gleams with a pearl-like quality.

“The finish and quality suggest class. Though they have a tie up with an Indian company, all the products are manufactured in Spain,” he says. But there is a hitch to the products, they need a trained plumber to fit them out or they may not perform to specifications.

This reality is never very far.

“Raju toilet mein paani nahin hai, bucket mein lao,” says the salesgirl at a Banjara Hills showroom that deals with washbasins lined with Picasso’s images and crystal handle faucets that cost upwards of Rs. 80,000.

But that’s not holding back the Hyderabadis.

This makeover for the loos and feeling proud about them is not limited to homes, even in semi-private and public spaces the toilet hygiene is improving.

Be it Mediterranean Cuisine in Toli Chowki or the restaurant space on the fifth floor of City Centre Mall or Trendset Towers opening out to Touch and Walden or the F Bar, the toilets are turning out to be places of pride. At the F Bar, the franchisee owner not just shows people around the place but takes them to men’s and women’s spaces marked out with fibreglass figurines. If the women’s loo is full of mirrors, the men’s loo is a spartan macho affair.

“People who come here should feel that they have come to the right place,” says the franchisee owner.

But this luxury is nothing new to a city that had hamams the size of basketball courts or paikhanas that were the size of average houses now.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail