India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation (19 page)

I ask Rahul, who is dressed in an airtex Adidas running shirt and jeans, why it is that a small minority comes to the mall in traditional dress.

He looks over and sizes up the man. ‘You know, it’s strange. If you walk outside, you’ll see plenty of people wearing mundus. They’ll be taxi drivers or labourers – ill-educated people. But a mundu in the mall? Then you can be pretty sure they’re wealthy. It’s an issue of pride, really. Most are old businessmen who’ve already made their fortunes or who work in traditional Keralan industries like coir or spices. They always wear the traditional clothes. It makes people look at them differently. See, just like you are now.’

I immediately drop my gaze. Rahul smiles. ‘They like that. They are used to getting respect. But in a mall everybody dresses the same so nobody would know them. Which is why they wear the mundu. It makes people recognise their social standing.’

I rather liked the idea of people flouting the advertisers’ pressure to take up Western dress. Malls spell homogenisation. Everyone shopping under the same roof. Everyone bombarded with the same merchandising. Everyone buying the same brands. For all their Western trappings, it pleased me that Kochi’s mall-goers had hung on to their culture. Try as he might, the zealous Mickey Mouse had not divested them entirely of their identities at Oberon’s revolving entrance door.

The food hall gives me particular reason for hope. Despite the array of burgers and pizza slices that fill people’s trays, a large contingent is still eating biryani and appam. In the main, diners still eschew cutlery for fingers. A special row of extra sinks caters for their hand-washing needs. And, by and large, people eat in families. Parents, grandparents and children sit together – not adults on one side and youfs on the other, and certainly not alone.

Full Circle is heartening for another reason: it is crammed to capacity. The retail area of Oberon is busy with people too. But most are not strictly ‘consumers’. They come to window-shop, mill around and generally pass the time. Malls are still new enough in India to be enjoyed for their novelty value. They act as recreation. Families used to travel across the bay to Fort Kochi to visit the Chinese fishing nets or take a boat ride in search of dolphins. Now they go to Oberon, the air-conditioned consumers’ play park. The shops themselves, however, remain more or less empty. Which is where the food court comes in. In a second-tier town such as Kochi, 501 jeans or Air Jordan shoes remain beyond most middle-class budgets. A Brownie
à la mode
at Baskin Robbins or a family-sized box of nuggets, on the other hand, fit perfectly.

Our detonators explode simultaneously.

Rahul enters the fray and collects our meals. When he returns, I try and steer the conversation towards the impact that malls are having on Indian society. Are they ushering in a new materialistic mentality? Might their Western mores, as some argue, represent a threat to Indian culture?

He toys with a sachet of ketchup. Eventually he prises it open with his long fingernails and squeezes a dollop on the side of his plate. He dips in a chip and sucks off the sweetened tomato sauce.

‘How can I put this in a nutshell?’ he muses, half to himself and half to me. His Nokia N95 phone sits on the table beside his fries. He picks it up and clicks on the camera function. ‘Check out this photo,’ he says, pointing the screen towards me. The image is slightly blurred but the two decorated elephants and accompanying village backdrop are clearly decipherable.

‘I took it last weekend. It’s from Irinjalakuda, the place I grew up. We went on a family visit: me, my little sister and my parents. My cousins and everyone still live there. The local temple was having a festival. That’s why the elephants are there. Last year, one of the elephants killed somebody, can you believe it?’ he says, showing me the photo once more before resetting his phone.

‘The village hasn’t changed at all. I swear. In the five years
since I was last there, I can see no difference at all. There’s one mall in the whole region – thirty kilometres away, in Thrissur. They’ve hardly ever been. Malls might influence a certain class in the cities. Richer, better-educated people, basically. But these people, my relatives . . .’

His teeth crunch down on the chip between his fingers. ‘. . . malls aren’t going to change their lives any time soon.’

As I travel around the country in the succeeding months, I visit a wide variety of other malls. They differ in size and shape. The balance between international products and domestic lines varies between big cities and small. Some malls have cinemas, others don’t. As with Oberon, few classify as strictly ‘out-of-town’. India’s sprawling urban centres make the very notion increasingly implausible. In general, the essential dynamics are the same: a rich elite buying, an aspirational middle-class browsing and the low-income Other serving their meals or guarding their cars in the parking lot.

As for Rahul’s views about the progress of Western consumption habits, I find a more mixed bag. Some agree that malls cater to a privileged few and that their broader impact is minimal. Others see them as a kind of Trojan horse within which Western retail culture will sneak into the country without anyone really noticing, until it’s too late.

Gautam Singhania takes a more pragmatic view. I go to speak to him at his multi-storey apartment block on Altamount Road, an exclusive enclave of south Mumbai. He is renting the luxury premises while his own personal skyscraper is being built down the road in Breach Candy. To get to his second-floor private office requires entering through the lobby car park. Under tarpaulin sit a handful of Mr Singhania’s favourite toys: a red Ferrari, a yellow Lamborghini and a blue Lotus Elise.

The son of a flamboyant retail millionaire with a penchant for hot-air-ballooning, Mr Singhania has inherited his father’s business empire and his high-octane daredevilry. He served his apprenticeship in the company’s latex condom division. Prophylactics are now in the past. Since his father’s retirement, he’s
trimmed down and spruced up the family firm, turning the Raymond Group into a profitable consortium of popular high-street brands. The company’s premium line sells the most expensive worsted cloth in the world.

Mr Singhania’s own playboy life is a parody (‘personification’, his PR team would prefer) of the company image. He is the kind of businessman who appears in the Indian edition of
Hello!
magazine at the helm of his huge teak yacht, who sets speed records and who talks liberally about his globetrotting and perfect marriage (‘the woman that tamed him’). Raymond’s strapline is the ‘Complete Man’, an image of Indian masculinity that the company’s chief executive projects both of himself and onto others. Few have a better handle on Indian consumer patterns.

Sitting at the head of his large mahogany boardroom table, his feet sunk into the shag-pile carpet and his eyes fixed on a brimming trophy cabinet, the retail mogul spells out how he sees India’s consuming public.

‘If you took a typical middle-aged guy ten years ago in this country, he’d say, “When I get to fifty-five or sixty-five, I’ll have saved enough money to buy myself a house and then I’ll retire in it.” There was no credit available back then. Today a twenty-five-year-old kid, as soon as he gets a job, he wants a mobile phone, he wants a car, he wants a house. And to buy them, he gets a loan. The mindset today is completely different. People are spending. They just want to be told how to spend. So now it’s all about marketing, helping consumers make a choice.’

I ask which kind of twenty-five-year-olds he has in mind. Is it the minority elite who I saw shopping on their credit cards in Oberon? Or does the net of eager consumers stretch further?

He leans forward. Today, people can be in the smallest of villages and see his advertisement on a television that they didn’t own a decade ago, he says, repeating the revelation that Captain Gopi obtained on his helicopter ride. ‘They can sit in their house with a modem and a mobile phone, and be virtually connected to the world.’ The power of that is ‘phenomenal’. Indian consumers know the latest trends. And not just those at the high end of the
spending spectrum. ‘Aspirations in Class Three, Class Four, Class Five, down the list, are much higher.’ Prahalad’s Pyramid, in other words.

The idea of potentially more than a billion people buying his worsted fabrics understandably excites Mr Singhania. If he is only partially right, the garage of his new mansion had better be equipped for a good deal more sports cars.

‘But what of Gandhian notions of austerity? Aren’t they central to Indian culture?’ I venture with a degree of hesitation.

One of the images of India that first drew me to the country was its reputation for other-worldliness. India – at least the India projected for decades to the outside world and the India I grew up reading about – was supposed to cherish simplicity as a spiritual virtue. Greed, consumption, the accumulation of possessions – these belonged to the ego, to venal desires that tie us to this world and blind us to the next.

‘You can’t change it,’ he fires back, clearly uninterested in worn-out notions from another century that may or may not once have held true. ‘Aspiration levels are now too high.’

I blanch at his directness. The Complete Man is sensitive to his public image. He doesn’t want to be construed as a vulgar capitalist.

He offers another, more rational argument. ‘Materialist things are rewards for performance. If you want the country to perform, you have to reward people for it.’

Gandhi would have argued the exact opposite. The gift for performance – for the hard work of austerity, of self-denial, of godliness – is inner peace and communal harmony, not mountains of branded goods to call your own.

The retail impresario and one-time condom manufacturer hunches his shoulders. ‘After all,’ he says, in a tone that suggests conciliation but invites no debate, ‘everyone has their desires.’

It’s one of the few points on which Singhania and Gandhi, the Retailer and the Renouncer, are in accord.

A month or so later, back in Kochi, Rahul’s desires continue to be US-bound. His dream has inched considerably closer since
we met to watch the adventures of Perseus & Co. He’s accepted a job. I am looking at Global Infonet’s new Chief Software Architect, responsible for ‘troubleshooting and tricky coding’. Rahul makes the job at the software company sound glamorous, the programmers’ equivalent of slaying Kraken. Global Infonet is based in Jacksonville, ‘in Florida, the US!’ His new software bosses are proposing to relocate him, conditional on a probation period and visa requirements.

‘It’s between New York and Florida at the moment. They’ve not decided. Man, I could earn upwards of sixty-five dollars per hour there. That’s a one-hundred-thousand-dollar salary.’

Rahul is, to put it mildly, excited.

We are sitting in Barista coffee store in Bay Pride Mall, a down-at-heel precursor to Oberon. The new entrant to India’s coffee-shop market offers an illustrated timeline on the wall. It starts with the year 1600, when coffee enters Europe, and finishes a few years ago with the first Barista store in Delhi. The chain’s burgeoning network now stands at two hundred and thirty outlets. In Bay Pride, its customers stretch to six: a young married couple sitting mutely over two voluminous Iced Caffe Mochas, two young men dressed in rugby shirts and smelling of Davidoff aftershave, and a pair of Chinese businessmen humming along to an Elton John soundtrack. Are they a picture of how India is evolving, the next entry on the historical chart? I would like to ask Rahul what he thinks, but his mind is on other things.

‘. . . so for the full H1V work visa, I need a degree. And for a L1V visa, I need at least one year’s work experience. So the current plan is to go initially on a V1 visa, and then change to . . .’

Mentally, if not physically, Rahul has already moved on. The tech fairs and electronic gadgets (‘I’m going to buy a Windows Phone 7 as soon as I get there’) in the US are calling him. Has India moved on too?

I look out of the window. It’s early evening. The wide promenade overlooking the bay is bustling with families enjoying a weekend stroll. A crowded ferry chugs out of the harbour terminal. From the industrial shipyard across the water, the foghorn
of a tanker bellows. Sugar-hungry children jump around the refrigerated cart of a street hawker, pestering their parents for a twenty-rupee ice cream. With their backs to the railings, a line of men sit on their haunches eating masala-coated peanuts out of old newspaper cones.

The scene inside the overpriced coffee store speaks of a different world from outside. One has moved, the other is moving. Whether the two will ever meet and, if so, how long such a coalition would take, remains unknown. For Rahul, the transition is too slow. Young and ambitious, he hasn’t the patience to wait. He wants his New India now, and if he has to leave India to get it, he will.

That the two worlds should be inching together, however, seems inescapable. Just a few kilometres down the road, construction workers are putting the finishing touches to Lulu Mall. Pitched as India’s largest shopping centre, its developers are banking on the strolling masses of today becoming the brand-hungry shoppers of tomorrow.

With no crystal ball, it’s impossible to say where India’s new-found consumer culture will take it. An extreme version of the future is waiting in the capital. I travel to Delhi and buy a ticket for the city’s biannual Fashion Week.

Ashdeen’s knickers are in a twist. The opening show is running late. Nina will be beside herself.

He pulls a tissue from his handbag and dabs his perspiring forehead. A dribble of sweat escapes, edging down his shorn sideburn. It is heading towards the folds of his neck and the collar of his navy satin shirt. He double-dabs. The sweat bubble is caught.

‘I mean, it’s just all just sooooo amateur, don’t you think.’

The pronouncement floats across the chattering table. The words are directed at no one in particular and they die away on the current of fashionista blabber.

‘Dyed. Yes, definitely dyed. What was she thinking?’ a thin-hipped fashion editor at the far end of the table snipes.

‘Well, it’s better than those,’ her plain-faced colleague replies, gasping in mock horror at a middle-aged brunette a couple of tables away. ‘I mean, if you’re going to get extensions, yaar, at least make sure they match.’

In their early twenties, both women are equipped with upper-class St Xavier accents and posh salon haircuts. Their summer dresses – both floral, both crimped at the waist and both ever so slightly flounced at the shoulder – shout style. Throw in a discreet gold necklace, a silver butterfly clip in the hair, designer heels. They are cool. They are
Elle
.

Ashdeen hovers on the edge of the group. He is wearing crisp white boating shorts and a newish pair of steel-grey Converse.

The twenty-nine-year-old Parsee embroiderer crosses his legs nervously. He twitches his head from side to side, uncharacteristically tense. The fingers of his right hand  begin drumming on his kneecap, like a trumpeter going through his practice scales.

‘Rumour is they’ve closed the gates. I mean, it’s a complete dii-saaa-sterrr.’ He is speaking into thin air. Flapping his hand, he reaches for a Diet Coke.

He takes a small sip and places the glass back on the table. He fears a full bladder as it’ll mean having to use the venue’s public toilets.

We are sitting in Olive beside a knee-high wicker gate. Within minutes of Delhi Fashion Week opening, the high-end eatery has been designated as the place to be. Ensconced on its white iron-framed seats are rows of bottoms wrapped in gorgeous silks and printed satins. Bony fingers reach greedily for tomato bruschettas topped with shavings of imported Italian Parmesan. Chilled Californian Chardonnay washes against expensive dental work. Circular, oversized dark glasses bob at one another in visual monotone.

We’ve ordered drinks, and now refuse to move. Like soldiers in our bolthole, we have staked our claim and will defend our territory tooth and varnished nail.

‘Fashion is like war,’ opines Julian, a colourful Brit dressed in tartan trousers and a voluminous bow tie. ‘There’s lots of sitting and waiting around for the action.’

The opening midday show is already half an hour late. Where better for a fashionable delay than a fashion event? Yet Ashdeen’s predictions seem to suggest something more serious is afoot. The evidence begins to mount. Ant-like assistants carrying walkie-talkies are pacing frantically up and down the venue hall. A sycophantic huddle forms around a harried Sunil Sethi, the white-bearded doyen of Indian fashion and the event’s chief organiser. Three police officers follow in his wake. A mêlée of television cameras attach themselves to the khaki-clad sergeants. An impromptu press conference is held at the far end of the venue. Still we do not budge. Word will come to us. Quickly enough it does.

‘Apparently, the place hasn’t been cleared by the fire department. All hell’s broken loose. The police say everything’s off until the proper papers are signed,’ an excited press photographer passes on, evidently best pleased by the chaos.

The news is met with equanimity by the group, and a grimace from Ashdeen. Julian breaks the tension. Leaning across the table, the fluffy teddy bear in his top jacket pocket lurching forward, he raises his glass and proposes a toast. ‘No one stops a fashion queen getting to their fashion, darlings.’ Everyone laughs.

The chatter gradually renews itself. Talk moves from general idle bitching to specific criticism about the delay. Some suggest the fire department is looking for publicity. Others hint at corruption, the popular catch-all for India’s woes. ‘When the backhanders got given out, someone forgot the fire inspector,’ jokes a manicured stylist. The majority opinion places fault with the event organisers.

‘This whole place is like a big . . . urghhh, what’s the word – a big tent,’ exclaims Nonita, the petite, barely-out-of-college editor of
Elle India
.

She waves her hand at the huge marquee, pitched in the inelegant conference complex of the National Small Industries Corporation. India’s haute couture brigade is a pampered lot. Fashion
shows happen in five-star hotels. Not on industrial estates in the deepest, darkest recesses of South Delhi. Nonita is disgusted. ‘It’s so . . . well . . . tacky,’ she exhales, as though the organisers’ taste and the delay were directly linked.

India’s designer fashion industry may only be a decade or so old, but it lacks nothing in self-importance. The launch of
Vogue India
and similar foreign fashion titles over the last few years has given it heightened confidence.

Underlying everything is the knowledge that the wealthy in India are getting wealthier. Dollar billionaires now beat the fifty mark, up from a dozen five years ago. Nor are the New Rich slow to spend. Sales of luxury sports cars, private jets and exclusive yachts are all rocketing. The waiting list for the top-of-the-range Rolls-Royce Phantom runs to several years. Luxury real estate is booming too. Industrialist Mukesh Ambani is just putting the finishing touches to his twenty-seven-storey ‘Skyscraper mansion’. The first six floors of the multi-million-dollar home serve as a car park. Six hundred staff will be on hand to service the modern-day maharaja, who intends to occupy the towering Mumbai apartment block with his wife and three children.

The fashion industry is taking off too. India’s luxury-brand market is reckoned to be worth around half a billion dollars, up from almost nothing a decade ago.

Atsu Sekhose, a rising star in the burgeoning fashion business, sidles up. ‘He’s very trendy, very bang-on,’ whispers Ashdeen under his breath. ‘Showcased in Miiii-lan.’ The suave, besuited designer from Nagaland greets everyone with an elaborate air-kiss. The table mwaa-mwaas him back. ‘Oh, delicious dress,’ he exclaims to a flattered Nonita. He sits and orders a Diet Coke. Behind his smooth exterior, his nerves are jangling. His afternoon show, he fears, might be cancelled. Beckoning back the waiter, he changes his order. ‘Make it a regular Coke.’

My eye drifts to a group of models on the neighbouring table. Ashdeen follows my gaze. ‘Diva,’ he says. That much is evident. Sitting with her back to the wall, chatting to her friends, is a long-haired siren. Blessed with luscious lips, dreamy hazel eyes and a
divinely sculpted nose, she’s the whole package. She’s an Indian Andromeda, the advertiser’s dream, a billboard knock-out.

‘Diva Dhawan,’ Ashdeen elaborates. ‘New face of Garnier. Sikh, hence the long hair. From New York. Brainy as well. Studies long-distance.’

The gay embroiderer counts off the rest of her table. ‘Nethra. What can I say? She’s a massive hit right now. Just won this TV show,
Khatron Ke Khiladi
[
Who Dares Wins
]. Then that’s Tamara next to her, on the right. Getting on a bit, but, again, massive. And the girl next to her, the one smoking with the short spiky hair. That’s Tinu. Seriously cool. DJs and stuff.’

‘And the short lady?’ I ask, indicating a dowdy woman eating her Difiore pasta with considerable nonchalance and evident good appetite.

‘Dunno. Must be a modelling agent or something,’ Ashdeen answers.

The four models are all tall and waif-thin. Their hair is uniformly lustrous, like the shampoo models on TV. But then they are the shampoo models on TV. I watch them from a distance, out of strict professional curiosity of course. Each picks at her salad as she chitchats. Tamara sips at a glass of water. Tinu checks her Blackberry for incoming mails.

Then it dawns on me: this is about as close as it gets to an Indian version of a
Sex in the City
all-girl lunch date. We have the overpriced food, the hip venue, the low-cholesterol, everything. Only the tone of the conversation is different. Less lewd, I imagine. Twenty-year-old Diva still travels everywhere with her mother as chaperone. But their poise, their effortless sense of style, the carefree way they giggle, the confidence with which they scan the room, the sheer sultry femininity with which they hold themselves – all of this encapsulates the women idealised by Nonita and her colleagues.

Are these the women Indian girls are growing up longing to be? Do the picture-perfect creatures across the room epitomise the shape and style of tomorrow’s India? I watch the other women in Olive stealing glances at them. I wonder if they are craving to
be like them. Or do they see them for what they are, as the mannequins of fashion designers, as projections of an abstract ideal?

The answer strikes me as important. Women the world over want to be more beautiful. The issue rests on
who
defines the parameters of such beauty. Women themselves, or a bevy of ad execs and fashion editors in Lower Manhattan? There’s a larger question here too, a question that lies beyond hem lengths and seasonal colour tones. It’s about direction. If India is on the move, where is it heading? Is it aping the West, a copycat case of cultural transition, or is it drawing on internal reference points and charting an Indian course all of its own?

‘. . . did you hear Sonam’s deal with Ray-Ban fell through . . . ?’

The talk around the table draws me back. The
Elle
girls are judging designers by the pretension of their after-show ‘thank yous’. One of the sub-editors is mimicking Ashmia Leana, drawing her hands together in a prayer-like ‘namaste’. ‘I mean, how ridiculous. She looked like some rustic behenji.’ The imitation brings a cackle of unpleasant laughter.

Just as I think there will be no escape, the
Hi Blitz
photographer creeps into view. Julian spots him first. He is no fan. ‘Run for cover,’ he squeals, pulling his spotted top hat down over his eyes.
Hi Blitz
is the paparazzi-based in-flight magazine for Kingfisher, part of the Vijay Mallya empire.

‘They don’t airbrush,’ he gasps theatrically. ‘I swear, it’s positively criminal. That guy could make a supermodel look ugly.’

Ashdeen suggests we leave the exclusive enclave of Olive and visit the designers’ zone in the next-door building. We skip by the photographer and head through the twee wicker exit gate.

Delhi’s top designers line up their collections in three neat rows. Each is assigned a boxed room in the enclosed conference block. These they endeavour to deck out in the style of their Hauz Khas Village boutiques, with tinted lights, eclectic window displays and clothes racks lolling under the weight of their latest creations.

Ashdeen runs his finger over the floor plan by the entrance. ‘J. J. Valaya, Rohit Bal, Tarun Tahiliani . . .’ He coos as he numbers off the industry’s big players. The most prestigious designers are
given the spots closest to the main door. Occupying the building’s far recesses are the new kids on the block.

We set off in a clockwise direction. A few designers are busy with private clients and retail buyers. Most are not. It’s early days. As an institution, Fashion Week is yet young. To keep from looking underemployed or, worse still, overlooked, they tap away at miniature laptops or fervently study their catalogues.

Four sewing machines encrusted in gold and brown beads occupy the storefront of Stall No. 33. I stop to look at them. As I do so, an Arab gentleman and his wife step out. She is veiled from head to foot in black. Two wide walnut eyes stare out from the visor of her burkha. She carries a shopping bag in either hand.

I wander in after her.

Rahul Khanna greets me warmly. A congratulatory smile is writ large across his face. The Arab customers had paid handsomely. Rahul is all helpfulness and charm. Dressed in a white open-necked shirt and tapered black jeans, he could pass as Italian.

‘I’m just in from Paris,’ he says, laying out his international credentials upfront.

Rich Indians love to boast about their foreign holidays: a sojourn in Switzerland, a fortnight in Florida, a fleeting shopping trip to London. They are the signs of having ‘arrived’. Arriving is very important for India’s affluent. It’s as if they’re endlessly popping out and feel the need to announce their successful return.

I am not an habitué of boutique design shops and begin rustling through the minimalist clothes racks with a brutishness that clearly concerns Rahul. He joins me at my elbow. As I move my way through his collection, he realigns each of the dresses back to their original position.

Rahul’s current collection is inspired by shadows, he tells me. A play on themes of light and shade. He is obviously itching to say more about his creative process, so I pull out my notebook and gesture for him to continue.

‘Well, as you’ll see, there’s a strong vintage influence. A touch of military too. Lots of drapery, lots of pleats, lots of folds.’ He strokes the dresses lovingly as he talks about them. ‘The colours
are all very metallic. Lots of layering. You’ll see there’s an emphasis on the shoulders. The Eighties are a big influence on my show this year.’ The fabrics? ‘Yes, the fabrics . . . a lot of chiffon, treated sand-washes, embossed silks, lightweight wools, hand-made sequins.’ He pulls out a low-cropped evening gown with a jagged hemline. ‘Laser cutting. You see? All very new. No scissors, no nothing. It gives it this fraying, flaring effect. Gorgeous, don’t you think?’

I agree, although my real interests lie elsewhere, back on the question I’d left hanging in Olive. Where did he look for inspiration, to home or abroad?

As a roundabout way of asking, I enquire where he sells his designs. It’s a mix, he tells me. He owns stores in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, but exhibits overseas. He has shows coming up in Singapore, the Middle East and Europe. ‘In Paris, they love all the glitter, glamour and gold,’ he insists. ‘I’m very appreciated there for my cuts and fabrics.’