Visiting a large shopping mall after two years feels weird!
The pandemic in the last two years have taught us a lot and (globalized) ecommerce in the last two decades has changed fundamentally on how I shop both essentials and on the wasteful.
Yesterday as I was roaming the “Phoenix Marketcity Velachery” mall, I felt hope and emptyness at the same time. The hope was for a post-pandemic world where humanity triumps over darkness. The emptyness was due to the pointlessness of these large artificial enclosures, wasting too much money and energy in the name of luxury.
It also occured to me on how wrong I was in the 1990s: As India went down liberalizing its economy, like most of the middle class of India, I saw malls as the indicator of economic growth and prosperity of a country. On every visit abroad, I spent hours on the shopping malls (most window shopping). In recent trips abroad, before the pandemic, I had hardly visited any mall. And yesterday I couldn’t spend the 30 minutes I had to wait for my friends before a movie – there was no shop that I wanted to go in, other than the only book shop!
Phoenix Marketcity, Velachery, Chennai
Palladium, Chennai
Park in Phoenix Marketcity
Inside view of Phoenix Marketcity, Chennai
Starmark, Emami Group – The bookstore and probably the largest in a mall in Chennai now
A view of Tamil books in Starmark, Chennai
Another rack of Tamil books in Starmark, Chennai
Luxe, Jazz Cinemas
Venkatarangan in front of an art exhibit made with plastic bottles
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