On a Friday last month, D and I decided to do something on a whim. We broke our now established weekend pattern of ‘logically arguing’ with ourselves and deciding to stay at home and watch a movie on OTT. Off(line) we went to the neighbourhood mall to watch a Malayalam movie, which turned out to be excellent, though the movie hall was just about half-packed. Since we’d had an early dinner, we decided to drop in at a Third Wave that we thought was new. But we hadn’t been to the mall in ages, and couldn’t be sure.
In a lovely post titled Fountains of Youths, Jamie Loftus visits food courts from Alaska to Arizona and talks to teens about the local mall, and their favourite fare at the food courts. As I read it, I found myself time travelling to the 80s. To Suburban Store in well, the suburbs of Cochin. It was a department store but with malls being non-existent this was magic enough for me. They had two aisles full of toys after all. In the 90s, it was Abad Plaza on Cochin’s main street, the only place that had French fries! 🙂
Zoom to the early 2000s and Transit at the Forum Mall, Koramangala was a regular hangout. We weren’t teens, but if Jamie talked to us, we would have had a few perspectives. In the 2010s, when Phoenix opened shop in Whitefield, we used to make the trek twice a year from Koramangala for the end of season sale. And chocolate momos at the food court were a ritual.
Our visits have dwindled since then, and just before COVID, I was melancholic about my snobbery (or about finally adulting?) when passing through a food court, I realised that my sensibilities had changed to an extent where I asked D, how we could have eaten this! And in the context of the mall, “why are so many people here!” 😐
At 10PM, we were one of a handful of customers at Third Wave. I sat sipping a Chamomile (I had given up after experiments at home, but thanks to this, realised that it is possible not to thoroughly destroy something!). The shops were closed and my cherished people-gawking pastime was impossible, but I realised I liked this. Late night in an empty mall. The coffee shop is adjacent to a book store and I told D that I missed the ‘discoveries’ at book stores. Amazon has spoilt me.
One of two other customers at the coffee shop was an elderly man. It was only when his driver (I think) came to wheel him out that I noticed he was in a wheelchair. He tried to convince his helper to have something, and failed. He left, checking out books as the security watched him, and smiling at us as he went past. I sighed. A few minutes later, we paid and left. Once upon a time we would have walked home, but the roads have too many dogs that turn to dire wolves. Once upon a time, I’d have carried a stick, but now a fight has too many downsides.
Something has shifted in me, I realised, as I turned back to look at the mall before getting into the cab. Maybe I will give Crossword some of my book business. And every once in a while, watch a movie in theatres. Discovery doesn’t just work for books. There is a joy in seeing other people laugh at the jokes while watching a movie, smiling back at an old man in a wheelchair in a mall at 10PM, and just seeing people outside the confines of a screen or an office. It seems we have come full circle. We are human again.