Mall mania, end of routine monotony in Bengaluru
BENGALURU: The weekend pilgrimage for most city-dwellers – the screaming-with-conspicuous-consumption shopping malls – sure offer a gleaming, chaotic break for us all from the monotonous chaos of the weekdays.
With the window displays, the discount signboards, the foyer centrepieces that double as selfie stations, the shopping destinations function well as hubs for retail therapy.
Add to it the heady mix of aromas that waft in from eateries at the food court, and you have the perfect cocktail to drown everyday tensions in.
It’s good for most of us that malls sprang up in the country just when David Dhawan movies were on their way out.
The Govinda-starrers were, after all, celebrated for giving three hours of stress-free time to the beleaguered middle class – a job these brand-bedecked buildings seem to be doing so wonderfully now.
Much as I enjoy a visit to an Orion or Mantri on a quiet afternoon, weekend evenings are when these places give a glimpse into how hungry people are for a ‘change’ from routine.
So what if all it involves is some time leisurely spent sitting on the stairs by the water body outside Orion mall.
With the restaurant-pubs lined up neatly along the paved avenue, the setting looks straight out of a friend’s social media post about a trip to a foreign locale.
Step inside, however, and a new world gets unfurled.
Enter the food court, and the world seems ready to implode, with people crisscrossing their way between the tables, balancing the melamine trays loaded with biryani over other people’s heads, to race to the nearest empty slot.
Some of them even station themselves close to the table that shows distinct signs of a meal nearing an end, to lay claim to the place just with their gaze.
There is yet another place at the mall where the intense gaze is most visible, the space in every ‘anchor’ store outside the women’s trial rooms.
Crowded by men holding ladies’ bags, the area almost resembles the airport arrival terminal, where eager greeters crane their necks to see if the next person emerging from the building is the one they have been waiting for.
Except, here the men don’t really seem to mind who is the woman emerging from the trial room to get her man’s nod about the new outfit.
She may be the one wearing a new shirt with the label peeping from the back, or the one who comes barefoot to get an opinion about a pair of trousers, or even the unsure middle-aged lady trying on a dress over hosiery leggings.
The gaze, you see, doesn’t mind soaking in an eyeful of any woman who steps out gingerly and looks for the familiar face amid the several zealous ones examining her.
Some men even nod at every woman, as if an on-the-spot collective decision has to be made. Some others try to seem like they are looking away, but surreptitiously glance in that very direction.
The situation can also take an uncomfortable turn. Like, for instance, the time when a young man enthusiastically entered the lingerie section to help his girl pick undergarments, and was ticked off by several women at one go.
He fixed his gaze to the floor, and walked away.
Then gazed back from a distance at where she stood. The salesgirls broke out in giggles, and this time it was their monotonous routine getting a break.