Brands and the Millennium City!

I can’t understand why folks are getting their knickers in a twist over a certain politician’s Louis Vuitton bag. Where I live, designer accessories are part and parcel of everyday life. From the little mouse in my apartment, the kids who land up at my doorstep on Halloween to my cleaning woman. Then, there are my friends and foes. 

Everyone has a thing about brands in Gurgaon.

 

The mouse will only nibble at branded cheese and turn up its little nose at anything else I place inside the trap. The trick-or-treaters insist on expensive candy and my cleaning woman has a shiny red designer clutch. Okay, it’s a Chanel knockoff but you get the drift.

 

If you can’t afford the real thing, you make do with a fake. Like my latest purchase. A pair of Adrcombie and Fetch sandals from the friendly neighbourhood shopping mall. There is absolutely no way you can tell that it’s not the real thing. My big fat feet hiding the logo probably has something to do with it. But seriously folks, I am not kidding. Even our local cows will only shop for Washington apples at the fruit mart.

 

Personally I don’t think it’s a big deal. If you have a thing for brands and can afford them, why ever not? Though I do think some designer wares look quite obnoxious and while I wouldn’t spend my hard-earned money on them, I wouldn’t grudge someone who does. 

 

Growing up in Calcutta, shopping for brands meant trips to Fancy (Phency) Market in Khidderpore. My first Yamaha synthesizer was purchased from a dingy shop inside the market. The best part about going to Fancy Market those days was the thrill factor. There would be frequent police raids and one never knew whether or not the raid would happen in the middle of one’s shopping expedition. So you had to be really quick and watch your back all the time!

 

Then, there was the stretch along Chowringhee – from New Market to Dharamtolla where vendors would sell phoren goods traded by cash-strapped foreigners to pay for their expenses on holiday. A selection of watches, unwashed clothes, handbags, belts, sunglasses would be hung on the racks for sale. My friend even discovered a few dollars inside the bag she bought with her birthday money. 

 

A far cry from shopping for branded stuff in Gurgaon. Here it’s completely legit and above board. No chance of a police raid unless the shop keeper hasn’t paid his taxes or has murdered someone in cold blood. But my friends swear that shopping expeditions to swanky malls are just as adrenaline-inducing. Since I’ve never been one to get my kicks that way - give me a trip to Fancy Market in the eighties any day. Throw in a time machine too.

Poltergeist? No, Power Cuts!

The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

I don’t think Bon Jovi (or was it that Jean-Baptiste Karr fellow?) was talking about Gurugram but the chappal fits really well so I’m going to use it. Gurugram might have evolved into a swanky glass-and-steel Millennium City (just like Singapore) from a dusty hamlet but there is one thing that has stayed the same despite all the mindboggling changes. Come summer and the crippling power cuts arrive without fail – often much earlier than the langra aam I wait for patiently.

When I moved to Gurgaon from Calcutta in 1998, I was awed by my new surroundings. Vast empty spaces, stretches of unfettered green, quaint kothis and a handful of condominiums – ours being one of the few. It was almost as though someone had built me a house in the middle of the Maidan. On a clear day, I could see the planes taking off from the Delhi airport, from my 10^th floor balcony and there was a huge ravine (and illegal quarry – more about that later) in front of the apartment.
 
It was September, chill in the air, a glorious time to relocate from muggy Calcutta. I had left my job at British Council and decided to spend a few months unpacking boxes and doing up my flat before I began the job hunt in earnest. And right from the onset of that first winter, one woke up to a curious early morning power cut. Our neighbourhood friendly uncleji helpfully informed us that power would go to the fields as it was sowing season. A few months rolled into summer and the actual power cuts began. The condominium didn’t have power back up (there was a tussle going on between the builders and the residents that we had no clue about). The inverter ran out within two hours and the aircon didn’t work on it, in any case. So I sat at home and wept. My only company being the nesting pigeons and the heat rashes that had sprung up all over my arms and neck. It was an oozing mess.
 
In the evenings, when the husband returned from work, we would cruise round the block in our Maruti 800, air conditioner on full blast, buying orange ice lollies from the ice cream vendors and and chatting into the wee hours of the morning. You might think it was romantic but truth be told, I was nagging him to move back to Calcutta.
 
A couple of earthquakes later, we were shaken and stirred enough to move. Not to Kolkata but to a solid park-facing bungalow down the road. What a fall from the 10^th floor apartment it was. But like those pesky poltergeists from the American horror movies, the power cuts moved with us. There was just no getting rid of them. The house would heat up like a brick kiln during the day and husband and me would go around with buckets of water, hosing down the walls and floor to keep it cool. Thankfully, the bungalow had a nice little courtyard and we’d carry a cane sofa out and sleep under the stars at night. Romantic? Not at all. Uncomfortable as heck? Yes. You see, Gurugram mosquitos are warriors whose ancestors might have learnt a trick or two from the legendary warrior guru. And unbeknownst to us, Delhi was dealing with its monkey menace by deporting its denizens to the forests almost next door.
 
A year later, despite the crippling power cuts and the mosquito warfare, including waking up next to a monkey family, a baby came along and several months down the line, we decided to have a rice ceremony for her. Horror of horrors, on the day of the ceremony, the electrical wiring in the house went kaput. All that hosing down with water was probably the cause. So we were stuck without power for good and a house full of guests! That night, after everything was over, we booked a room at The Bristol (the only hotel in Gurgaon at that point of time) and had a good night’s sleep after months. 
 
Cut to the present. We live in a condo with functional gensets but every summer, it’s the same. The Return of Poltergeist in HD. The generators trip because they can’t carry the load of all the air conditioners running full blast in 900 odd flats. The electrical appliances go bust and I could be the heroine of my own horror movie. Often I let out a huge sigh of resignation and wonder whether things will ever improve here. Or perhaps it’s my destiny? After all I grew up in West Bengal in the eighties with rampant load shedding, candles and invertors for company with a Chief Minister who was called Jyoti (Light). It’s almost as though I landed from the frying pan into the fire. 
 
Dang - the lights gone again. See you later.

The Theory of Unidentified Flying Objects (that could be chapatis)

I was walking inside my condo last evening when something landed on my head with a painful thwack. I rubbed my head in alarm and found (of all things) a chapati. I might have eaten it. It was nearly dinner time and I was feeling nippish. Whoever says no to a free snack? But the unidentified flying chapati had turned brittle with age and it belonged inside a trash can. So I disposed of it and went to sit in the park outside my block of flats where I had a Newton moment.

In hindsight, it could have been a concussion. The top of my head felt sore and I could feel a bump forming. But in that instance, it seemed as though the Universe was providing some sort of insight into why people fling stale chapatis from their towers at unsuspecting people below. So I closed my eyes and listened intently to what it had to say. 

 

When the Universe started talking in Punjabi, I realized something was not right. I opened one eye to find my neighbour, Mrs Malhotra, on the bench next to me.  And she was talking (rather loudly) on the phone with someone. So much for my Newton-esque revelation. 

The woman finished her call, dumped her phone inside her bag and turned to me with a smile. “You got hit by a chapati, no? I noticed the lady in the flat above was feeding the birds.”

 

“Feeding the birds or trying to kill them?” I muttered. “She was flinging the rotis with great force. She could have hurt someone.”

 

“Arrey don’t be silly,” she giggled. “She’s a bird lover. And the birds love her.”

 

“How do you know the birds love her? Would you love someone who served you stale food? Besides, are stale chapatis safe for birds to eat? Why not give them some grains or seeds?” I argued. “If you won’t eat something yourself, why give it to birds and animals?”

I’d seen folks feed stale chapatis to cows on the streets plenty of times. At least they were not flinging food but I couldn’t ignore the traffic snarls that ensued.

 

She shrugged. “The birds don’t have a problem with it."

 

“How would you know? Have you asked their opinion?” I shot back.

 

She got up and walked off in a huff. I smiled to myself. She wouldn’t be lecturing me for a while. Never underestimate the power of a flying chapati. 

 

As for Bird Woman in the flat above, I think I’ll pay her a visit with a prezzie. A CD of an Alfred Hitchcock movie and a tale about the real-life incident at Capitola that inspired the film. 

 

I think I should start a movement to make our birds gluten free again. What do you think?