The Malls of Bangalore

One of the biggest malls in India is not far from my house. Not much else interesting is near my house, so I have already made two trips there.


I wrote some about the amazing economic dichotomy in China. This is the first real place that I have found it here. In fact, in northern India, there was much less dichotomy than I expected. Maybe this was just circumstantial, but during my two weeks in northern India, I was not able to find any upper class areas. Almost everyone I met was in poverty or at most in the lower middle class. There was little dichotomy - everyone was poor.

Supporting my crude impression, McKinsey divides India today into five economic classes. The lowest two buckets - the "Deprived" and the "Aspirers" make up 94% of society. The Middle Class equivalent bucket makes up only 4%, while the top 2 buckets (upper middle, and upper class) each only make up 1% of society.

But here in Bangalore, that small middle class makes its presence felt, at least a little. And the mall by my house is one example of this. The mall has nice depatment stores, medium-high end brand stores (Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, Adidas, to name a few), an Apple reseller store, and a nice bookstore. No Prada or Gucci or super-premium brands, but still some pretty nice stores. There is also a Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and a food court with lots of fast Indian food and other Asian food. I had some chicken and rice from a place called Yo!China for dinner. Not great, but it sort of satisfied my first Chinese craving in a while. I also got a US$3 gelato from a pretty good ice cream place.



The mall does have a few weird aspects though:


To enter the mall, everyone has to walk through a metal detector. This metal detector is about 3 feet wide, and everyone tries to squeeze through it as fast as possible. So there are always multiple people going through it at the same time. And you do not have to take the metal detectors out of your pockets or take metal out of your bags. But the detector never, ever beeps. So there is a huge 30ft wide glass entrance to the mall, a line of people squeezing through a tiny metal detector under the watchful eye of security, and absolutely no point to any of it.


After dinner one night, I headed to walk home. But outside, it had started pouring. I asked a guy where I could get an umbrella. He pointed to a store on the second floor. I trudged up there, and asked where the umbrellas were. The clerk said that they did not have any. I asked where in the mall I could get one. He said he did not think anyone in the mall sold umbrellas, but maybe I could go to a few blocks down the street. How does a mall not sell umbrellas in a city where they have a monsoon season?


Also, for a while I got stuck behind three women trying to get on the escalator. They were stopped at the bottom of an up-moving escalator, giggling and not moving. A little confused, I tried first to get around them, couldn't, then stepped back to watch. A few other people came up and tried to get by but couldn't either. After a bit, it became clear that these women (or at least 2 of the 3) had never ridden an escalator before. They were dressed in their "sunday best" sarees for the trip to the mall. They seemed to be in their 40s or 50s. All seemed to be having the best time. Finally, two of them bit the bullet and did a small leap on to the escalator. The third did not jump. The first two shriked with joy. The third smiled, shrugged, turned, and walked up the stairs next to the escalator. All three hugged at the top.


Finally, I bought the new Harry Potter book today. It cost R975, or about US$25. For perspective, I spent R300 / night in Leh for my hotel. But the Harry Potter phenomenon is amazing. India's infrastructure and logistics capabilities are incredibly bad. There are few good roads, almost no runnning water, and the power goes out every few hours. In Jaipur, for a specific example, residents have running water for 15-20 minutes per day. Yet somehow, in every city and town of any size that I went to, you could find the new Harry Potter book. Today, I caved and bought it. Somehow, it seemed necessary.