Depressing at Best

After hearing so much about Gurgaon malls and the whole “mall culture”, I have to say I’m super-depressed right now.

The Fellow and I decided to go mall-hopping since we were in the vicinity and had the time (though not necessarily the inclination on my part). And my instinct proved right. As always. Not only are the malls quite lame in terms of the shops they hold, they’re terribly designed, and are a complete waste of space and all kinds of important resources. And to complete the sorry sight is the near absence of people and bored security guards. The only things that are moving in these malls are the escalators.

My analysis and judgment of the gaon malls is purely based on my extensive experience with those in Bombay. And even without my natural and all too justified bias towards my city, Bombay malls are so much swankier, shinier, happier and generally welcoming (most of them at least). And even when people are not actively shopping in them, they give a sense of activity and the food courts are always full. Here, the food courts were a sad sight, with maybe half a dozen people looking lost and wondering what they were doing there. And I don’t blame them. The food outlets were nothing to write home about. Quite the contrary actually.

And the worst bit is that most of the shops in the malls (and I mean all the malls here) are closed on Tuesdays. It’s a mall for crying out loud. You can’t have 10 malls in a 2 kilometre radius and then pull the shutters down one day a week! Who does that? What kind of a place is this? Sheesh!

I never really liked Delhi. And now my disdain extends towards its suburbs also. Tsk. Tsk.