The new culture of the urbanization is building grand malls of a town size and keeping in display ; pin to planes. The city dwellers too rush their with their cars and every resident of such cities make it a point to visit this temple of commerce a holy place. None is against sale. But the question is why should we store the whole world under a single umbrella?
Malls can't be in neighborhood
Since these shops of small and big are huge in numbers they can't be neighborhood shops. Hence every one has to burn fuel to reach them and the majority spending much fuel.
Car Parking/two wheeler parkings
Since thousands of vehicles are to be parked- a maze of underground and above ground parking lots are built. As if rats man with his vehicle goes down in a circular orbit till signaled to stop. Determined young men and women wait for their victims and extend a sheet vomited by an e-printer. The moment your cars hit those electronic eyes your bill starts rolling. The more you stay; the more you pay. Whether you buy or not you have already spent for the fuel and for car parking.
Moving chains
As these malls of five to fifty story wonders every one has to an elevator/escalator/walkalator and so on. The mall is spending for the energy bills for a prospective customer. The energy spent here is too huge in quantity.
Conditioned air
The neighbor hood shops can be kept open without electricity for days and in nights with candles the work can go on. Here power is absolutely essential and they do have a big back up. In case of power break downs they have to turn on huge fuel guzzling monsters for temporary power supply. The entire millions of square meter sized mall is air conditioned and hence the shop doing business or nothing too spends power. At nights by 10 p.m normally traditional shops are closed but here the city dweller likes darkness and the shops are open for 24 hours resulting in more energy spend.And what is the need to keep our cycles and shirts ; soaps and hair oils in air-conditioned cells?The city folk rush there as if this is the first shop they have ever seen and the first purchase they make forgetting his friendly neighbor hood shop.
Glassnosts
Again here every thing is behind transparent glass houses. Liquids or powder' - everything packed to the best of the marketing company's brains and arranged neatly. Every item tempts everyone. The visitor and the seller both have longing eyes. One expects to buy but none needs all and none has money to buy all he wants and hence the longing eyes; and the seller expects an entry of every visitor and a sale and hence longing eyes.
Garbage of goods
Still there come people who go on a buying spree and fill baskets or shipping trolleys with plastic cards and wait endlessly before the billing counters. I watch many times such purchases are chased by the lust to possess more and not by any necessity.
Window-shoppers
As most of our cityscapes are left with no open space to stop and stare at leisure, the only option before them to be away from their rented or installment eating concrete walls are these malls.
The poor youth chat and walk past the textile store statues which tempt them to buy. They see everything and buy nothing. Maximum they could afford was for an ice-cream.Thus they sport smiles on their faces but their hearts burdened by the longing of buying.
It is a pity that every city wants to have a mall for all. This fashion of 'have the sky under concrete roof' is much against our green programme. There is nothing great or small in buying things in these ultra modern shops. To add injury to the insults cine halls are also there.
Safety hazards
In case of an accident or the terror driven modern life, large number of lives would be put in danger as everyone would try to escape to safety at a time. The safety doors and exits can work only when there is power and they can't cater to all the thousands. The world witnessed such in the WTC attacks and quite often we see people jumping out from 10th or 20th floors to the ground to lose their lives. Hence don't put every egg in one baskets- our traditional wisdom says.
Let us patronize our neighborhood shops and buy what we need and not what we want. For leisure and pleasure shopping and shipping is not an answer. Just walk down the road or water the plants or trees across the avenue or in the local park. Spending money can't be a leisure activity. Your friendly shopkeeper would sell his goods and attend your marriage but the fashionable shop owner would not come even up to your carriage.
Is the thing I want to buy is so indispensable? Can't I survive or run my office/home without it? Ask these questions before you think of shopping.
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