Musings in the Mall

Where we congregate significantly reveals how we look at communities, I feel. What kind of spaces do we congregate in? Who has access to those spaces? Who uses those spaces? What kind of physical ambience do these spaces have? How does it interact with the larger external spaces and community? … and so on.

These many questions and ruminations went through my mind, as I sat in the local “mall” and “relaxed” and “chilled” with a cup of coffee, while my children played interactive, audio-visuals games in a designated area – either on the larger screens or on the ubiquitous mobiles. I sat alone. As I buried myself in my coffee and magazine that was so kindly laid out, with stray pieces of conversations floating from around, I felt my isolation completely. Felt suffocated. Somehow the table-space – my table-space – the space around my table felt plastic, inelastic and had the capacity to remove all connections from the rest of the world. Perhaps if I had a couple of friends sitting with me I might not have felt it so sharply. But I didn’t think my connection to couple of my friends could have compensated for the loss of the larger web of sense of connection.

Strangely enough, I had never felt this intensity of isolation in rural areas… where communal spaces are defined entirely differently. Not knowing the language, or coming from a significantly different background and socio-economic frame, did not render my connections to the larger world null and void. Whether I sat under the “rachhabanda” – that platform around the magnificiently spreading tree, or sat on a rock at the pond or river where people bathed and washed their clothes, or even hung-out on the benches of the chai-ki-dukaan, or the courtyards of individual houses, it did not matter. The spaces somehow inevitably stretched out to include other spaces around. Even though people around me did not speak to me, I didn’t feel disjointed or unconnected. If not the people, then there was always the breeze, the sun, the leaves, the birds and animals, the joyfully shrieking and playing children, the happy chaos of tinny, blaring music… that connected me to the world.

Had I grown old? Or was I a misfit in an alien society? Yet I dressed similarly as others, spoke the same language, and shopped and needed similar “things”. I was of the same socio-economic background… similar lifestyle. So what was wrong?

It was the Space. It is then one understood the importance and impact of the psychology of space… and how it is designed. How it inevitably creates or eliminates connections and relationships.

Public Space – that fragile, much needed space that fosters and maintains the sense of community - is a very important element that has fallen to the sacrificial guillotine of development and growth. It is the first that gets sacrificed to the increasing density and needs of infrastructure and internal structures. Parks, play grounds, public walk ways, ponds, lakes, beaches, etc. have all fallen to the juggernaut of growth. Today we find public space to be a luxury available only to very few in the luxury of malls and shopping complexes. Places that are clearly “closed”, its ambience and internal atmosphere regulated, unexposed to external/ natural elements – safe, controlled and exclusive. Even open spaces with trees that breathe in the Earth are only available in controlled, manicured environments.

More significantly, it is the children’s spaces that the first to shrink and go. Play grounds, and parks are fast becoming things of past. Similarly women too lose their congregational spaces early on. More and more communal congregations are expected to happen in “closed” spaces – the new fad being the “community centre” where meetings happen, events held, functions and celebrations hosted. It also doubles as the “hang-out” inevitably only for men.

To me, how we design, maintain and manage our public space is very much reflective of the psyche of the society. The Public Space is a representation of how society has changed in the last few decades. Privatisation of the larger Public Space such that it is molded and converted into a private Public Space, controlled and exclusive, expensive and inaccessible to the larger part of humanity, is symbolic of Us today.

I finished my coffee, picked up my “things”, called out to my children and plunged into the chaos of the road outside… into the footpaths that had become public spaces to the remainder of the humanity out there.

Buzzing Future

Google has launched its Buzz ... a social media tool ... and unlike FB which is a standalone, it seeks to integrate its various utilities, offering a seemingly seamless experience of all that we have, we do and we want.

Today's Technologies, like Science, are moving more and more towards these quantum dimensions ... the space where certainties cease to exist and we move into the exciting realms of possibilities and probables. Where anything can happen. Where any tiny movement can create an undulation that changes reality. It will not be long before even the perceived division in between these two realms cease to exist and it will be possible to move freely within this continuum. The utilities and the instruments are but a physical manifestation of the what society is living through. What is even more interesting is the schizophrenia between a society that is moving towards fusion and a society that is polarizing - the more it polarizes in the economic and political realms, the more it fuses in science and technology and socio-cultural realms. The more society fragments and divides, the more it unifies and merges. The more physical and certain it becomes, the more nebulous and ethereal it becomes.

And one enjoys actually 'seeing' and 'living' this contradiction. And that too in the mega-scale and mega-dimensions it is happening. What fun !

I wonder how the current history will be written. And how this period of transition and ascendance will be seen by our future selves.

Mont Blanc Mahatma !

If nothing else, I am glad about the one impact of the Mont Blanc's coming up with a limited edition Mahatma pen - a $23,000 pen for a man who probably did not spend even $23 per month on himself. It provoked thousands into reflecting upon the contradictions that we live with and helped us more sharply identify to ourselves what we can consider practical values.

This action of Mont Blanc brings to mind a few characteristics that permeate our culture today. Riding on someone's else's greatness/ popularity. A 'Brand' culture that somehow makes it alright for an ordinary product to take on disproportionate value. A culture that can sell anything!

What was the logic in creating such a product, I wonder. A first-world luxury product to symbolize a man wore a dhoti and traveled third-class? A 'phoren' product for a man who thought, believed and lived 'Swadeshi'? A price tag that might be the entire lifetime earnings and spending capacity of the country's lower middle class, leave alone the close-to-the-Mahatma's-heart poor!?

One wonders whether the designers of the pen even pondered over the values or lifestyle of Gandhi when they designed it. I am sure it is not easy for a designer to create an 'exclusive' product that can suitably synthesize the two extremes - a more-than-elite Mont Blanc and a live-simply, egalitarian Gandhi - to commemorate Gandhi symbolizing his actions and virtues (never mind the vices. We can keep those aside for the moment). Didn't the marketing department of Mont Blanc warn it of the risk of fooling around with such a 'symbol'?

It might have been far better if Mont Blanc had distributed 'ordinary' pens in hundreds of schools to millions of children in the name of Gandhi, catering symbolically to the education needs of the poor. They could have then glorified THIS act into a fancy pen with maybe a concert or two thrown in to raise a few millions that could be distributed to grassroots initiatives. This could have catered to the demands of the 'Brand' needs as well as catered to the desire of Mont Blanc to pay tribute to Gandhi without compromising his principles.

At the moment, Mont Blanc's Mahatma pen does nothing except risk being a laughing-stock at the least and an 'Indian' backlash at the worst.

And in the meanwhile we can wait for the next products - interwoven gold-and-silk dhotis? ivory dandas inlaid with gems? diamond studded, round-framed spectacles? Suggestions, anyone?

The Ways of the Mahatma

It was October 2nd yesterday and it was a day spent in reflection of what the Mahatma had to say. I find his learnings and his teachings more and more relevant, practical and workable in today's world that is faced with the turning point of the current civilization.

Gandhi’s proposal and the recognition of the Law of Love above all was one of his most profound; which can be understood when we have sufficiently explored within ourselves, and accepted for ourselves the contradiction of frailty and strength of our human nature. He said, “Whether humanity will consciously follow the law of love, I do not know. But that need not perturb us. The law will work just as the law of gravitation works, whether we accept it or not…”. And it is this Law of Love that has maintained Life amidst destruction, demonstrating the working of much greater and higher power which is not visible to us....

read the whole article at Desicritics.org....

Kabul !

What would it mean to live with war and conflict all your life ? To be born into a War and grow up with violence around you ? War would seem like a natural activity. The violent, gory blood-shed would become part of the psyche ? What kind of values would one develop ? Of right and wrong ?

Afghanistan, a fierce-spirited country, proud and self-respecting nation, would be an example of such a psycho-social fabric. There are of course other places too like Palestine etc.

Kabul has a special place in my heart. Bombed out of its mind and heart, the empty shells of many a building that stare out blindly at the world, Kabul stands testimony to Afghanistan's gory history of three decades of war and turmoil.


kite-runners ...

The narrow by-lanes, the mud/ adobe houses, ingrained with old timber, its bustling and jostling market, the all-pervasive smell of the kababs, and the pictures of Hindi film heroes and heroines along with blaring hindi songs at every corner, made a unique mix of charm. Combined with the warmth of smiles of the people, the city could win anyone's heart.

The contradictions in the human psyche manifest externally and violently in Kabul. Children playing among the ruins and pock-marked walls was an anomaly one could not adjust to. So was it difficult to relate with the strong American accents of these kids. So was seeing tanks, soldiers with guns, being frisked and checked at various points, difficult to handle.

One takes one's freedom for granted - freedom to speak, to write, to travel around, to live life the way one wants, to believe in one's beliefs ... everyday normal stuff. Until one encounters a Kabul. Until one listens to the everyday stories of people. Until one witnesses the results of human need for power and control over another.




What kind of futures would the young ones have? What will they grow up to be? What happens to the wounds that the hearts and spirits carry - of witnessing whole families wiped out, of the treatment which mothers, sisters and aunts received. What would be their God? What right does another human have to walk into your homes and lay it in ruins?



One feels deep compassion and a deep sympathy for a people of such a nation. An admiration for the endurance of the human spirit, the ability to adapt and adjust and find happiness in whatever one can, fly kites and hear songs, fiercely grasping at the little that comes their way ....

Kabul is a testimony to the human spirit !

Armchair causes

Once in a way, I get these invitations for causes on facebook. Initially, I took the trouble to read what it was and even went to the extent of joining few. But now I am beginning to question these 'click for a cause' causes.

Does the money it promises really go to the cause promised? That is one basic question. But beyond this is what this kind of initiatives have done to us - it has turned millions into armchair philanthrophists. We click and believe we have contributed to a cause. And we forget it. We don't even bother to check what really happens to it. There are no updates about what is happening to the so-called cause. Whether it earned what it promised. There is no place that shows the list of people who have clicked-and-contributed. Nothing. Except probably collecting profile data for some marketing gimmick.

It has done what it promises to us - somewhere it has satisfied our need to be relevant. We believe we have done our best. We haven't had to deal with the realities that causes otherwise have. We also get to announce to the world how much we care.

Another symptom of a Facebook Society.

An Identity Crisis

BRAND. Logo. Universal process.... tick, tock, tick, tock ...

It is strange this culture of the BRAND. It is a fight for individuality. A struggle to be identified for its difference. A cry against the cloning culture of society ... ! At the same time, it perpetuates the principles of the cloning society ... the Brand is the same wherever you go, whichever part of the world. Its odd, this. A struggle for individuality and attention subscribing to the principles of universality and standardization culture.

McDonald is a good example. Wherever you go in the world, the Mac is the same - the same look, the same toys, the same look-alike people. Yet, the Brand is distinctive because it has perpetuated a sameness everywhere.

I sometimes wonder why products, their feel and look cannot be subsumed within a cultural context. Can the Mac look and feel Arab-like in arabian countries? Or chinese in china? Or Indian in India? Instead of looking American wherever it is? Will it destroy its self-respect? Will it take away from its sense of identity?

Its not only McDonald. Its everywhere. Clothes, food, magazines, cars, water-bottles (!) .... A struggle for identity perpetuating a sameness.

Cloning culture

As Walter pointed out, Hyderabad airport is a good example of George Ritzer's concept of "Globalization of Nothing". Ritzer defines Nothing as generally centrally conceived and controlled and largely lacking in distinctive substance, while something is defined as generally indigenously conceived and controlled and possesses much in the way of distinctive substance. In other words, something is being one of a kind, and nothing is lack of uniqueness.

The airport has a "global" quality - undistinctive, uniform, like-anywhere-else airport. I often feel disoriented in such buildings. When standing inside any of these buildings, sometimes just for a moment, I try to remember where I am, which city? It was the same sense of déjà vu at the Hyderabad airport. As we entered it felt like the Turin airport and the inside reminded of the Paris departure area.

It is difficult to understand why Hyderabad airport should not look Hyderabadi. Why it should look like an European airport. The materials, the glass, even the so called ‘artistry’ of encasing the innards of the mechanical equipment in glass...

The motto of standardization is seen in airports, hotels, ATMs, malls, super-markets, metros, metro-stations, expressways, flyovers, traffic-lights, facades, billboards.... Even the models in the advertisements seem to look alike. We are now firmly entrenched in a look-alike, be-alike society. Our movies. Our soap-operas and reality shows. Our buildings. Our lifestyle. Our thinking, too, I am afraid.

I wonder whether we draw a sense of community and safety from within these symbols and motifs of the look-alike culture. We feel less alien. We are with the familiar, the understood. We are part of a larger machinery.

I guess with the fall of the many beliefs and systems, the current society is in a vacuum, in a limbo. Nothing has worked – the American dream, the maoist liberation, the communist revolution. The promise of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the ending of the Cold War has proven to be hollow. The liberation brought about by Globalization only tinsel in nature. Do we feel somewhere deep inside that this is not what we wanted? But are afraid to say it, face it? Or is it the bigger, deeper fear of knowing that we do not know what we want?

I would like to think that this not-working out is an indication that something completely different needs to happen. That this is not the path. I would like to think this might be the calm before the storm, the stillness of the turning tide, the pause before the wheel turns. The space where the idea is taking birth.

That the Substance is in the process of being formed, being defined.