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How many people would you kill to become the proud owner of a bright red, hairy plush arm chair? Or would you kill yourself if someone suggested that you own such a thing? The answer to which kind of a person you are can be found in a short walk through the compound of what was once a textile mill in the centre of Mumbai.

It’s a bit of a harrowing walk, jumping over puddles and negotiating between the protruding posteriors of parked high-end cars. The prize at the end of the course is a profusion of furniture and home décor shops, plus a couple of “boutiques”. It’s hard to know which are more frightening: the parade of glittery clothes or the squidgy lurex-infested yellow bananas that decorate stylish stainless steel geegaws in a fairly interesting “store”. Truth be told, the rest of the stuff is not bad, it’s just that I don’t use the kind of soap that justifies a Rs 400 soap dish. Still, one dreams.

A little further on, dream turns to nightmare. I baulk at the existence of rexine, I shudder at the thought of faux colonial, I scream when someone mentions chrome. So why do I walk into a shop that excels at them all?

Perhaps to gawk at a giant chandelier, a concoction of swirling metal suspended over a coffee table on a large curved rod. It’s adjustable too: the rod is anchored in a big box and can go up and down. Wow, double whammy: ugly and mobile. After that, the silver brocade fringed lampshade and matching chairs hardly merit a glance.

Outside the air-conditioned environs, the rundown ramshackle nature of the mill compound dominates. Maybe that’s the idea. Yet, does it really work? The cliched contrast between falling apart and aiming high, the inverted snobbery of a converted mill? Nextdoor is another one of those converted mills, Phoenix, which rose from the ashes once and which is all such a joyous celebration of consumerism that the incongruity strikes you only when you walk out. Here, with the display of good taste, the differences swoop down when you walk in.

Indeed, the “tasteful” shop that follows is a relief. Especially after all the Rs2 lakh sofas with leather side tables and the Rs80,000 aluminium tables skillfully crafted to look like rattan (“so useful for the outdoors”), but only because of the comforting scent of vetiver (khus to the rest of you) that fills the air. In fact, my pain only peaks at all that hushed “tastefulness” around. It whispers its superiority with such assurance that I wish I had the stomach for a bright red hairy chair. I rush from the tres chic wine bar, charge past the off-white sofas and white tents, linger the longest in the crockery section and leave. Wallet intact, sanity in tatters.

Still, I am a snob who will not pay Rs 3 lakh (not that I can afford it) for a copycat sofa with a brand name and a tag that I’ll have to display. Even if I could afford it, I have no chateau for a Venetian glass chandelier. Do I even want a chateau? The loos are terrible, I hear. I want to be myself, I want to straddle many styles to create my own. Even if I don’t stand out from the crowd (see, the thought of that red hairy sofa persists), I must not blend in either. And mistakenly make a “minimalistic” home chock-a-block with bric-a-brac.

The distance from Tulsi Pipe Road to Jogeshwari is long and dusty and enters a parallel universe. But there, amidst the clutter of old and nearly old jhulas and chests (too, too last century darling), of plywood beds and forlorn doors torn from their homes, are a few minds who understand: Wood, wallets, and wishes that are horses.

So I’ll never fit in. I won’t buy the capris and the red shoes. I won’t havethe (yuck) bling. And I shan’t have a chandelier that bobs up and down. You can hate me. I think I’ll still have better furniture.