Lyngdoh: Homeward bound

Hyderabad, Feb. 4: Come Saturday and J.M. Lyngdoh should be ready to move to his spanking new home near Hyderabad, lock, stock and Labradors.

The outgoing chief election commissioner is getting a bungalow built amid the greenery of Podathur village, 40 km from here, where he plans to stay once he quits his official Safdarjung road residence.

In keeping with his very private nature, Lyngdoh has picked a quiet village nestling in a valley where both visitors and farmhouses are few and far between. Most of the one-storey bungalow — painted light brown — is ready and Lyngdoh is expected any time, wife and dogs in tow.

There was a sort of “housewarming” last month when Lyngdoh had come to check out the state of his home, unique because no wood has been used to build any part of it. The doors and windows are of fibreglass and not an inch of wood has been used, not even in the window frames.

The bungalow, built over a quarter acre of land, has a big hall, a bedroom and the kitchen on the ground floor. There are two more bedrooms on the first floor. No furniture has been moved in yet, but Lyngdoh has made it clear he does not “like plants to be cut for his dining table or sofa set”.

“He has not decided on interior decoration yet and the bungalow is still bare. But it has a spacious hall with gardens both in front and at the back,” said G.B.K. Rao, proprietor of Pragati Resorts, who sold Lyngdoh the plot in the early nineties.

Rao said he had not been aware that he was selling land to a “celebrity”. “He came to me as a common man and sought a plot on my new estate.”

Lyngdoh had not made headlines with his straightspeak then. From 1990-94, he was director-general of the National Institute of Rural Development and became election commissioner soon after.

Although Lyngdoh is a Khasi tribal from Shillong — his sister Evelyn was once a professor in Lady Brabourne College in Calcutta — experts are not surprised he has chosen to spend life after retirement elsewhere. He is believed to have a cosmopolitan outlook — his wife is from Ambala — and went to the US for a course after finishing his studies in Shillong.

Rao said Lyngdoh had first planned to settle in Kochi in Kerala and had even tried to buy land there. But he found the prices prohibitive and registration rules confusing. “He found the regulations in Hyderabad friendly, so he decided to shift here,” he said. Lyngdoh bought the plot for as little as Rs 2.75 lakh.

True to his reputation, Lyngdoh has left instruction that no one should seek relaxation in regulations while building his house. “Even when his belongings were brought, he hired vehicles and personally had them transported,” Rao said.