The Hindu Business Line : Mall — it's the in-thing

TILL last Sunday one had not visited a mall. "You should be ashamed for not seeing the best thing happening in Mumbai," an inflamed friend told me. For long one had thought of visiting Crossroads at Tardeo, probably the first mall in the city, but never made it. Somehow the glass structure seen from the street frightens one. Every suburb in Mumbai wants to have a mall of its own. It is like having your own flyover.

Borivili does not have a mall while nearby Kandivili, Malad, Goregaon and Jogeshwari have at least one each if not two. "They built it to do business and make profits. A mall provides every comfort without trying to be arty. For you, Gandhi's Sewagram may look fine but it has never made any money as none visits the place," the same friend told me. InOrbit is a mall in Malad though my friend Paul thinks it is in Goregaon. "I can see it from my home," he contends and then gets down to details about the mall. InOrbit is a recent structure and has come up on a waste dump. "Till InOrbit was built, the area stank. A twin tower housing structure was going cheap as none wanted to buy a flat facing a dumping yard. With InOrbit in place, the location has turned hep and homes are not available in the twin tower housing society. The mall has started a housing boom with most societies being at least 25 storeys tall, if not more. In a couple of years my society will look like a slum with irregular water supply," Paul tells me.

For Vivek Bendre, "malls are remaking Mumbai. That's the day's flavour." The Webster's defines mall as both a shady public walk and a shopping centre. InOrbit is a shopping centre with four cinema halls. On Sunday afternoon, Rama and myself took a train to Malad and then an autorickshaw to InOrbit to see Shonali Bose's film Amu. One had read about the film and being an admirer of Konkona Sen Sharma one wanted to see her in Amu.

InOrbit is kept neat and clean by a team of young workmen and there were no crowds at the ticket counter. There were no touts selling tickets in black but that could be because there was no rush for Amu. At the ticket counter, a well-dressed young girl punched out two tickets costing Rs 100 each with a smile and a "Thank you." Rama and myself walked into InOrbit with its glass dome and got lost in the young crowd. Every young woman dressed in jeans and T-shirts with a mobile in hand had with her a young man in jeans, T-shirts and a mobile and most of the talk was peppered with, "Oh, shit yaar... ." Shops selling clothes and every other thing available in New York were neatly spread out while the food counters had crowds buying cakes and popcorn.

Amu is running at the Fame cinema theatre located in the second floor. Escalators and glass lifts take the crowds up and down but we climbed the stairs being a bit nervous. Promptly at 2.45 p.m., the doors of Fame opened and we were ushered into a rather ill-lit theatre and it took some time for us to find our seats. Just about 50 people were there to see Amu and all were carrying packets of quality popcorn in paper bags (Rs 60) and a Coke (Rs 40). We stood up for the National Anthem though one has not grasped the relevance of the ritual ahead of screening a film. Amu is worth it, though, as Vivek says, it is not meant for the "tapori (street) public."

Dropping in on India, Konkana, settled in the US, is trying to get in touch with her first country. While strumming at her roots she stumbles into a past — the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in New Delhi. Most of the pain is in her eyes and the cameraman conveys it all. The young lady donned a more or less similar role in Mr. & Mrs. Iyer while stuck in a communal riot. More than Konkana is the way Brinda Karat carries herself in the film (including a short tap dance). She should quit politics and enter films.

The film has been edited nimbly and the story has some good laughs. There is a shot of an old grandmother curiously asking (sans any vulgarity) Konkana in Bengali : "How do you girls in jeans manage to piss." The audience laughed. The film has a mix of dialogues in English, Bengali, Hindi and Punjabi. The director does not needlessly probe into the riots; rather, she feelingly pulls the audience into her narration with the lens than with windy talk. Yet, the censors seem to have blanked a few sentences when hurt Punjabis dwell on the politicians behind the slaughter. Going back we bought cakes and pastries for Rs 200. InOrbit on Sunday cost Rs 700.

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