Four cities in five weeks! Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai. All metros, all sufficiently progressive. Delhi leading the Internet revenues, Pune - the IT services hub, Bangalore - already a legend in the western world and Chennai - the emerging financial services BPO hub. To add to that I live in Mumbai - the financial capital of India.
This is not about the cities that I want to talk about, but about the loss of identity of each of the cities. Whether I go to the Forum Mall in Bangalore or MG Road in Pune or any malls in Chennai or in Gurgaon the sameness of the places bore me to death. It is the same Barista, Cafe Coffee Day, MacDs, Shopper's Stop and so on that flourish. The same brands in uniformity across every horizon. Once upon a time it was comforting to see familiarity, now it is scary.
If I want authentic Maharashtrain food in Mumbai I have to hunt hard. To find Coorg coffee or chicken I need to go to some small eatery in Bangalore. Maybe I am wrong and it does make sense to have uniformity where people go and spend money to buy things that look the same, taste the same and so on. Maybe in five years we will have Mall rats and Mall wives and mall guys. I guess we are heading the US way.
But think about it. What if you got local cuisine, local arts, local ideas, local culture all in one sealed unit inside a large mall. Say if someone repeated it over and over in every city. Will it work? Suppose merchandisers went and sourced paithanis from aurangabad, Kaanchiverams from Chennai and Coir mats from Kerala and all this was available in a 4 lakhs square feel mall in Mumbai. Call it a festival of India.
Come to think of it, these kind of malls have been around. You can see them at the MMRDA ground in Bandra Mumbai. Maybe all it needs is some good packaging.
Who wants to invest?.
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