Picture courtesy: Business Today Mobile
I grew up in the suburbs. Mumbai was fairly far away at the
time and dad would take me along when he went for his work sometimes. He would
take me to Mani’s at Matunga for lunch, where I would enjoy dosa’s and medu
vada’s with unlimited sambar. It was a good time spent, him telling me stories
about how he enjoyed his time at Mani’s with his friends, how he scored that
half-century on the cricket ground across the street and how he took the
winning catch! It was all fun and Mumbai seemed cool. A place where my dad had
his memories tied, a place which served as a gateway for us to take the train
to visit my uncle, a place where we bought the sweets and fire-crackers for
Diwali.
McDonalds had already made its way to India when I was still
a kid, but we didn’t see one around where I lived. Let alone coming across one,
I had not even heard of it till a couple of years since inception in Indian
market. Well, most middle-class Indian’s from my generation would relate
surely, that we always had this one rich/ elite family in our circle with great
cars, a huge house and the ability to make you feel shitty. I got that “You
haven’t been to McDonald’s yet?” when I was a kid. They would boast about
having been at McDonalds and Crossroads Mall (where you couldn’t enter if you
didn’t have a debit/ credit card). Slowly then, I started coming across more
people like these, only to notice that there were quite a lot.
Chinese food, Mall culture, McDonalds, Hookah parlors, brands
like Levis and Spykar (don’t even know why it was/ is so popular), most sedans,
expressways, PC’s, coffee shops like Café Coffee Day and Barista - all entered
the Indian lifestyle way too steeply. There was no time for a common suburban
kid to get exposed to all this stuff. Then slowly, things got common. The
biggest McDonald’s opened in Kalamboli, where the expressway to Pune would
begin. It was like an Oasis for the Mumbaikar’s to wait in a small town where
their kids could feel comfortable in the ‘playplace’. As if no one ever loved
eating at Shree Datta snacks. The ‘harbor line’ trains were in full
service by now and a teenager could easily escape to Vashi, which was like
being in Vegas. Malls, lights, chicks, wide roads, sweet cars and customized
bikes – they were all there. The kids
were now at least getting their share of urban life. I was that one of them.
I then went on for higher education, the whole fallacy of
fancy spaces with neon lights was overruled by Architecture School and I got
over these attractions pretty quick. I was now a part of the urban domain. Only
to realize that it wasn’t me. We all went through a social phenomenon of
accepting these new things which suddenly came in and just stayed. It wasn’t me
growing; the society had absorbed all this. It was now common to order a sweet
corn soup and a hot ’n sour soup and spring rolls followed by uttapa, pav bhaji
and biryani in the same meal.
Till recently, I thought it was just a phase and we had
absorbed the things around the world in a very short time. There was nothing to
boast about, there was nothing to be hysterically amazed by. Not in Mumbai at
least. You might have experienced how poor kids in remote areas get excited
when they see you with a digital SLR or for instance they see a white guy (‘foreigner’-
the most worshiped deity in rural India). We in Mumbai don’t.
Then suddenly one day, Starbucks comes in, and that same stupid
people rise. These are mostly the ones who have been to a place where they have
Starbucks, or have someone who got them the Starbucks coffee beans, or who just
want to establish the fact that they are elite. I saw a video where people were
interviewed and shamelessly confessed (rather boasted) that they had been in Que for past couple
of hours to get a freaking coffee! When asked why, the only answer was,
‘Starbucks hai boss! Worth the wait!’ Paying 200 INR for the coffee is not the
issue. I remember paying 75 at Barista, so that I could spend time with my
girlfriend without having some anna waiter slamming the check before
being asked for. But crowding a coffee shop because it’s a Starbucks ‘from
America!’ is plain bullshit.
It only shows that the phase is not gone. For generations to
come, we probably won’t get over the western attraction syndrome, and
that our society is yet not ready to react to globalization. Mumbaikar’s
crowding the Starbucks are just like the poor kids from remote villages who
have never seen a camera before. The excitement of getting the coffee from Starbucks
is like the kid watching his face on the LCD screen of the camera. It’s in
there, it’s going on the web, people are going to watch it, but the kid is just
becoming a subject in the process. He won’t get a print and he can’t keep the
digital copy either. He can only boast to the other kids that he saw himself on
the screen of the camera, that he met someone who had had a coffee at
Starbucks! Get over it people, you are better than this!
Note: This post is meant to hurt the feelings of only the participating individuals. I'm not making/ trying to make a general statement/ view on Indian society or Mumbaikars for that matter. I love Mumbai and Mumbaikars.
