Malls - Our New Temples

It is the season of festivals in India with Durga puja and Diwali round the corner. Festival means shopping. For many of the older generations who can remember a time when everyone used to buy new clothes, home decors etc. and considered the festivals a time for family gathering and rampant consumerism. But I think those of us who live in large cities would be kidding ourselves if we pretended that this is the only time we engage in such fanatical consumerism. Today shopping in Malls is a year round priority. They have become a symbol of our economic prosperity and how far we have moved ahead in embracing the western import. Nowadays our default venue for all our need & activities is the Mall. Whether it is shopping groceries, apparels, foot wears or eating, watching a movie, meeting friends, having a romantic date or just loitering around in the air-conditioned corridors doing nothing but window shopping. The attractive and colourful advertisements inside & outside the malls look so catchy and takes us to a phony dreamland where we think that if only we had that pair of jeans, we would feel more fulfilled. And this desire has no limits. And as an economist said, “The very concept of shopping malls plays on the feelings of inadequacy & competitiveness. It makes us feel that we lack something or that everyone else has something we do not yet own. Thus we purchase to fit in”. How can this continuous feeling of competitiveness, of us always trying to be “cool”, bring us true joy? But the saddest part of the so called “Mall culture” is that it sets aside an awful lot of other activities which are more beautiful and representative of our culture & region. Instead of wasting our time in the confines of a Mall, we could be cooking, visiting a nearby tourist destination, reading a book, writing poetry or blogs, taking a walk or simply visiting a friend. It is sad that we are building one Mall after the other on every vacant land known to us when we should be building art galleries, amphitheaters, museums, sports clubs, libraries, Leisure parks etc. Our continued infuriating romance for building the shiny concrete hell only leaves us with a glaring question to answer – Are Malls a sign of our new wealth or does it show the poverty of our imagination?