Promise of Reason

The skyline is filled with boxes built of mirrored windows, skeletons of new malls and billboards promising a better life for the country’s modern maharajas. Shop at Tommy Hilfiger and eat at Pizza Hut. The toilets flush automatically, The floors are spotless. “There’s a new culture coming now,” said Pawan Sharma, sitting at McD in Globus Mall, which opened last year. “The Western culture, the mall culture is coming. This is not really the traditional India.”

This is closer to the opposite of India. In this country, people traditionally shop at local markets, where vegetables are sold in one tiny shop and milk in another. Shoppers go from one store to the next, buying flowers here, chicken there. They bargain for better deals. The markets often are filthy, littered with garbage. But the malls offer everything under one roof, even stores such as Big Bazaar, a smaller, more chaotic version of Wal-Mart (one is there in our own ShopC named NayaBazaar) are out of fashion now. There is central air conditioning, a novelty here. Signs tell people how to ride the escalators, still new to India. Songs by Depeche Mode and Radiohead blare over mall loudspeakers. People speak to each other in English instead of Hindi. Read the rest of this entry »

I am not going to write it in every line but all points given below are screaming only one word – consumerism, consumerism, consumerism

1. All-in-one stores. With everything from groceries and vegetables to footwear, clothes, cosmetics, furnishings and electrical items available under one roof, a growing middle class with higher disposable incomes is heading for the malls in droves.

2. For some, it is a way to chill out on movies and food in the added comfort of a fully air-conditioned space. “In short, it is a living room for most of them.” Read the rest of this entry »