The new secessionists

The new secessionists
Shefali Misra

Hotels and restaurants do it, don't they? Turn away ragamuffins and insist on a cover charge, that is. What's this hysteria about the Bombay shopping mall Crossroads deciding that visitors "who do not have any identity" (mall general manager Rajesh Jaggi) must pay Rs 60 to get their filthy feet in? It's a free world, and if a private shopping mall decides to do this, who is Maharashtra CM Vilasrao Deshmukh to declare it unconstitutional, as he has done in his profound wisdom?

Pestered by unwelcome visitors without too many pennies to their name, Crossroads has decreed that that those who are unable to produce a credit card, mobile phone, club membership card, student ID or frequent flyer card must buy vouchers worth Rs 60 to be redeemed at a shop inside.

Unconstitutional? Now that is absurd. In any case, even with the right vocabulary, it would be a fool who imagined that the management had not done its legal home work before starting the voucher thing. Some self-righteous idiot was bound to challenge it in this land of diehard socialists. The tone of the management is not confident and aggressive without good reason.

The provocation was gross. Listen to one store owner in the mall: "It was such a mela on Sundays and holidays. Droves of these òf40ólower and òf40ómiddle class (italics òf40ómine) families would throng the shopping mall. The children would use the escalators as if they were at some picnic." Yuck. Uncouth pests.

Well, in another land, the mall would have dug its own grave. Customers with a shade more shame and empathy for their fellow, er, non-customers, would have punished such crass behaviour by choosing to take their custom elsewhere. The media in their òf40ójholawala liberal spirit already are gunning for the poor mall. But Crossroads need have no fears. It will have that almighty thing, customer power, behind it. Having seceded from the filth and the misery, the ò40ólower and the òf40ómiddle classes of this country in their fancy cars and barricaded homes, groovy bars and cool restaurants, it is only natural that -- we have a phrase for it -- people like us or PLUs should want to shop in peace, unmolested by undesirables crowding the place in all their undeodarised smelliness. Just a logical extension of the way we live and a glimpse of the heaven this our land will be when we have completed our takeover, hopefully in the not too distant future.

Sad to say, but this whole thing presents in ugly little microcosm our own ugly little face as a society: utterly lacking basic decency and a sense of community. We have learned to put plasticky little smiles on our face for the benefit of strangers in order to be considered polite and cosmopolitan, but that is for the benefit of PLUs alone. To get a grip on our real humanity, check out how we behave towards those who are less fortunate.

Return to Crossroads. A store or mall would be perfectly justified in demanding that people should make an offering at the altar that is the shopping mall in today's culture. It isn't running a public park. It can charge a flat entry fee, without discriminating between card flashers and mobile phone wavers on the one hand and the rest on the other.

There are other, subtler ways. Ever stepped into a fancy store on an impulse and lingered undecidedly, eyeing something, and been approached by a stern sales assistant asking if he can help? Intimidating, is it not? If you'd no intention of buying something, you'd usually leave.

There is a certain refinement in the crassest commercialism that has gone brazenly missing here. Call it fundamental uncouthness.