The Pregnant Baby

 

It’s an effort to pass it off as a mall in this town of Haryana, even though it is no more than a street urchin in front of a self-sustaining, mature, confident young man. Delhi isn’t too far, and almost everybody, to whom the issues like malls matter, especially the teenagers and young adults, has been, one time or the other, to the famed Ambience and Sahara in Gurugram and scores of other malls in the Delhi NCR.

However, you just cannot scamper away to those famous places every time your eyes burn with desire to watch the latest release; your tongue lets loose a stream of saliva to dab into something chatpata, some pizza burger sandwich chicken fry; your wallet appears too heavy and eager to shed some bucks to get some famous brand, some trousers, underwear, undergarments, jeans, shirts, tops, trackpants, sneakers, chappal, joota and more.

We get as much itchy to spend as we are eager to earn. That’s where the consumer culture draws its lifeblood from. And these days you don’t want to hunt around in a dusty, sweaty market to get your cravings fulfilled. There are too many shops and too many provisions. You need many items of many types within shortest time. You want it at one place. So a small town, with its inhabitants having tasted the luxury a mall offers, has to have a mall.

And here it comes taking the first tottering steps of a toddler.

The three-storeyed mall has come up to at least partially fulfill the shoppers’ and idlers’ dreams. It’s an adolescent town running to meet its mature city-self down the decade. One side on the ground floor has garments, footwear and a couple of saloons. The other side has struggled. Subway struggled there, so did pizza wallas, and so did the franchisee-less efforts at cuisine by enterprising dish-makers. The peda and lassi wallah left. They left with more enthusiasm than they opened.

A Patanjali store, sure of its brand, on the nationalistic upswing, has taken the space of three stores by removing the walls in between. It has more display cases and rows than the number of people at a time. Still we survive for future. The brand gives all indication of growing, growing and still growing. Let’s see how far it goes here.

On the second floor, one side is ready to take shoppers in. But it is all shuttered up, no takers so far. The other side is yet to have its separate blocks of shops. Even the floor tiles are missing. You just have the all-clear view across the glass front along the outer side.

We missed the basement part. It has a huge, stuffed to the gills, provision store. The rest is parking lot where hardly anyone parks, apart from those who have set up business here. The teenagers just try to get suddenly invisible, now standing here, now gone, and steal some kisses behind the pillars in the basement.

A boy and a girl kissing, though still a considerable scandal, is no longer the sin it used to be a decade back when it fetched honor killings as natural consequences. Now it fetches leering, jealous remarks and sniping hooting. That much is digestible for a goddamn kiss. Of course there are many, who don’t have a girl in their lives, even in this freeway decade, when many successful macho boys claim that girls are more easily available than even the brandless shirts in rundown stores. So these pining, girlless souls prowl around to catch it preferably on camera, and leave it in the endless stream of the social media.

Domino’s arrived with a bang, “Try all new Dominos”. They had the push of their brand. Unfortunately, not many takers. It closed. Displays are still there, waiting for a new player to relieve them of their wasted duty.

On the glass-fronted marketplace side of the mall, Looks Unisex Saloon is displayed in white letters on a tar black board. Its plush interiors and golden embellishments invite with a modern smirk. To surpass the rickety level of small town modesty, both males and females are welcome. Well, that makes it modern by default. It’s a humungous effort to catch up with modernity. The rate of change has lagged a bit in the society lynched by patriarchy.

By the salon’s side, New York Slice are gone. Unique Collection, the garmenters, look over the counters to spot some serious buyers. The staff at Giani’s since 1956 broom the not so stomped floor, trying to make it swanky clean. They are trying to look damn busy, thinking their up-to-the-mark seriousness will draw people. By its side, Satyam Medical Store sells condoms, I-pills, toffees, chocolates, napkins, but hardly any takers for medicines. They must be selling some headache pills and ENO to survive.

In the lobby on the ground floor, a very smartly fixed cubicle covered with flex-boards welcomes you. It’s Batra Lemon Corner, a red cubicle with price lists of nimbu lemon, jeera lemon, milk rose, pista rose and many more displayed all along the upper half of the set-up. The lower half of the cubicle still carries the signs of its past. The previous entrepreneur, Sip and Bite, tried to seduce young boys and girls with a group of patties, aloo patties, macrony patties, chilly patties and still more. The past that never was, it hardly began, and ended. It but still survives to remind some bored eyes that there are patties in this world.

On the ground floor some shutters are closed, but they have attractive displays. These are shops in making. Auram, by Nisha. No clue what it may mean or stand for. Only time will tell. It may remain anonymous, the entrepreneur may decide to call it quits at this stage only. A nail art saloon, D’nails, get any design on your nail. It seems progressive. Till a decade back those who look at the board didn’t even realize the importance of decking up face, forget about nails that got broken while dealing with buffaloes and bulls in the fields. Dollar, always on top, upcoming. These are rich red letters bordered with white on a pitch black board. An aggressive style statement for the undergarment brand. They have been around for some time, so may storm through the initial apathy of window-shoppers.

Like a dead, open-mouthed whale, the green Subway cubicle has been closed with more enthusiasm than it was started with. Or is it open forever? Sub in white and Way in yellow, in a white elliptical background. Metal chairs and plastic tables are neatly stacked inside. At least there is grace in closing down. The owner seems to be a diligent person. There is also a plastic room cooler and glassless display case. It was a world that saw its end coming even before it was born.

Nearby, Amazing Kids is yet to come with its collection of kids wear. The starter must be keeping a close watch over the kids loitering around holding the fingers of their parents. United Colors of Benetton is operational on full pace. The spacious interior has enough privacy for flirtation among the sales staff. Shopping wise there isn’t much of botheration.

Priya Retail Store, shop and save. The invitation is very sympathetic. But is there any saving after shopping? Ever? Anywhere? It’s about spending. Baker’s Hut has nice, suave, white, brown and grey tiles. Who cares? The attendant is yawning like he has just woken up, even though it’s almost lunch time. City Heart Restaurant has claustrophobic interiors. An LED blares as if in the musty backseats of a disc. Teenagers just sit around to watch some song, drink water, do their stuff under the tables and go out. In the garments store next to it, even the notice of 50% discount offer repels more people than it attracts.

Very few people take the lift, after all it’s a matter of just two flights of stairs. But its door has advertisement stickers arranged very nicely. These are city brandmakers: Family Dentist, Verma Pathology, Rawal Retina Centre, Bansal Health Square, City Computer Point, etc., etc. Small people with big dreams. Well, isn’t world made of such people only. Those who are no longer small, hardly live.

The third floor is the liveliest one. They have two screens of Max Cinema on the one side. Opposite is a long and spacious gym, running along the full length of the mall. You can see fat middle aged women, their children gone to schools, and husbands packed off to workplaces, sweating out on the treadmill to chuck out tummy and bum fat at noontime. It’s also about getting a bit of Godsent opportunity for some fling to bear up the sinisterly boring tide of the creepy mid-life crisis and boredom.

Max Cinema entry is a bit livelier. They do some business at least. Not that they play nice movies all the time. The business puller is the fact that they provide privacy and darkness. Icing on the cake. Couples with thudding hearts sneak in to get corner seats to hold hand and do a bit more as would not make them repent the cost of INR 300 for two seats.

Two teenagers are stopped by the guard who asks them to take the Centrefresh out of their pockets and deposit on the counter. “You stick it on the seats,” he is in a position to chide. Those who don’t have a girl actually do this, possibly as revenge and a sort of rebellion by their teenaged self.  

National anthem gets played before the movie starts. Nobody wants to court controversy, so all stand up willingly, unwillingly. They get down even before the last note is finished. Nobody wants to lose even a precious second in the cool darkness.  

In the national flag, saffron and green are separated by white. How symbolic! There has to be peace between them. But who will play white?    

It’s the cinema that really makes the story for this mall in its infancy. The heaviest footfall was when Dangal was screened. It was never livelier. What a crowed! The owners may have the first night of complete sleep during Dangal screening.

Cinema is pushing the revolution of bringing boys and girls together. The surrounding area is deeply conservative. Teenagers and adolescents don’t look forward to watch hit movies. They like those lean weeks when there is no super-hit spoiling their hideout by the surging crowds. They prefer flops, when hardly anyone comes for the show. The big, dark and cool hideout is the perfect bargain for 150 rupees. A lot of intimacies unfold, with just a few dozen couples busy with their expression of love and lust in far corners, in the middle of the rows, or anywhere the contriving self of a flushed adolescent deems it fit.

You may have the best of a girl with the worst of a guy, the best of a boy with a horribly thin girl, both good looking, both average, both funny, or many combinations probable in between. As many combos as you can ever think of. It’s an eclectic mix. It’s not about choice. The floodgates have recently been opened, so you cannot be choosy. It’s only about having a boyfriend or a girlfriend. On principle. Choices, what, when, how, where and why come later.

Girls come with their faces covered with headcloth. Well hooded for secrecy. The strains of patriarchy are still surviving. Honor killings are still not totally unheard off. It’s better to be cautious. The headcloth, which kept women in almost slavery for centuries, is now an instrument of freedom, of anonymity, of facelessness. With it you just become a girl, a generality, you lose your name. You cover your face and you lose your identity to become just a girl. So the scornful eyes of elders will just curse a girl generally, instead of you particularly.

The small town girls on the path of unshackling themselves from the chains of tradition and patriarchy wear jeans, suit and salwars, in awkward imitation of the world in the movies and the Delhi NCR. Some look terribly funny though. But it’s more important to assert your independence. It can come at the cost of sounding funny. A dignified slavery is worse. A funny independence is better. Somehow. Don’t have the logic for this. Just that it feels so.  

With hooded faces they loiter around, almost on tiptoes, keeping a strict watch with their eyes, lest they be recognized by some acquaintance. If they haven’t actually seen it, at least all of them have heard of honor killings that were rampant, as little back as 5 years ago, in each and every settlement in Haryana. So it’s about flying with the wings of age, of curiosity, of sex, intimacy, kissing and holding hands. The mall thus grows in operations; month after month more people come, making it less scandalous for the young ones. Let’s hope the theft becomes a routine affair of life, to draw it out from the illegal shadows of minds to turn it just a mere simple fact of life, to stop rape, to vanquish molestation.

Let’s hope freedom brings genuine love in people’s lives. Till now it appears like a mischief and theft. Things are changing slowly though. Let it be a vibrant society, which is engrossed in higher purposes of life, instead of people being forced to explore their sexuality almost till the end of their life. Where the virtual world, defined by the so called virtues, keeps on acquiring weirder and weirder shapes, taking the person further and further from the real potential he/she is born with.