MUMBAI (AFP) - – It's hard to miss the place that the world's fourth richest man and his family will soon call home. The boxy apartment block dominates the skyline above the traffic-choked roads that lead to south Mumbai.
Up close, Mukesh Ambani's palatial 570-feet (174-metre) tower looms even larger over the gnarly banyan trees, whose tendrils hang low over the high whitewashed walls and wrought-iron gates of upmarket Altamount Road.
Ambani, his wife, three children and possibly his elderly mother are said to be weeks away from moving into their new home, which according to reports has six floors of parking, swimming pools, a ballroom, a cinema and three helipads.
Few people publicly begrudge 53-year-old Ambani his 29-billion-dollar fortune or his success as head of India's largest private company, Reliance Industries Limited.
But the lavish pad, which one British newspaper suggested epitomised "the swagger and confidence of India's economically buoyant upper echelons", is as real for most as the mythical island "Antilia" it is supposedly named after.
Half of the estimated 18 million people in India's crowded financial hub live in sprawling, insanitary slums, with sketchy or non-existent electricity and water supplies.
The gulf between rich and poor is visible just a short walk from Altamount Road, where entire families can be found living under a flyover and on pavements near the foreign consulates and exclusive boutiques.
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