People who complain about suburban America (ie, many who live there) don’t realize that those same wide streets and identical houses represent a worldwide fantasy. In this fantasy America, everyone has a car and a two-story house, a neat paved driveway shaded with trees. This is the suburban America that Hollywood often chooses (I think unconsciously) as a backdrop for its films.
Thus the Indian fascination with car ownership and multiple bedrooms, but especially with malls.
Malls are everywhere. The nearby Atria Mall looks like a landed spaceship. The Phoenix Mills mall, a little further, is undergoing extensive renovation. Even Kalyan, where my grandparents live, has sprouted a multi-level mall with a paved courtyard. The theory with these malls is: the bigger, the better. The more air conditioning, window-ing, and fountain-ing, the better.
Actually, they look exactly like American malls and were probably constructed by the same people. But the difference is stark when set in India’s still teeming and somewhat disorganized roads.
Interestingly, the things we bemoan about malls – their sameness, their ubiquity, their uniform beige lighting – is a luxury here. Indians flock to the malls for designer clothes by Puma, for vegetables packaged in cellophane.
Meanwhile, tourists haunt the Colaba causeway, a street in downtown Mumbai where vendors hawk beautiful blouses and shirts, export rejects by big international labels, for a fraction of the cost - $4-5 a piece.
In the railway markets, vendors sell loose shirts and blouses, sets of fabric for tailoring, and heaps of fresh vegetables straight in from the farms. When I went, I saw five or six veggies I’d never eaten before. Things like jackfruit, chiku, tondli, etc – along with more unexpected items like beets.
Unfortunately, the same fascination with neat packaging will lead to the same unpleasant environmental ill-effects - India's trash per person will hit the roof, more resulting landfills, more smells.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a little girl, my mom went shopping with a cloth bag or two for her veggies, which were never packaged (that's why 2 bags - for different loose veggies such as fresh in-the-pod peas, breen beans, etc. We all helped sort the veggies, shell the peas, look with distaste at the occasional caterpillar that had arrived in a bundle of spinach, etc. It kept me close to the earth.
I wish we could preserve that even as these malls sprout up....sadly, today a woman who carries a cloth bag for groceries in India is viewed as a hopeless 'behenji' lacking sophistication. But wait, perhaps paradoxically, things in the US are now reversing - the more sophisticated woman carries her reusable cloth bag with her to the grocery store, dresses in cotton, chooses to pay more for organic fresh produce (versus the prepared meal in the overpackaged box in the freezer) and cage-free eggs in cardboard boxes (versus the ubiquitous styrofoam).....stuff that hopefully helps her stay 'grounded' - much like my mom used to?
Every year, during 'earth day' or some other, my kids' schools had a 'low trash' competition - all kids had to bring lunches with very little packaging. all trash generated was weighed at the end of the meal, and the class with the lightest load won stuff like ice cream socials, 'no homework' days, etc. i hope such awareness is being taught to the kids in India - it has to start very, very young.
You're right - it's strange that being environmentally conscious is becoming an ultra-luxury item in the developed world, where in countries like India the reverse still seems to be true.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I will say that even a very wealthy Indian (at least to my observation) still doesn't consume as much energy as the average American. But I could be wrong about this one.