No Man’s Mall

I was lazing around one fine morning, with a full loafing schedule planned for the week. Just then my friend Moros Sophius, a wise senile old man, popped up and blocked my view of the ceiling. He cackled, “Haha! Prepare to be astounded!” I sighed and asked him what the matter was, this time. He’d been visiting me quite often since the commencement of my holidays, and it was always to show me some “great wonder” of the world. He usually did this by teleporting me in a clichéd manner to some obscure corner of the globe. Once, he took me to Normandy to see the remains of an old parachute (fitted with the skeleton of the man who was shot while landing), and once he transported me, without any warning, to some obscure underwater cave in the Atlantic Ocean. He excitedly pointed out a rotting hulk of wood and said it was the real Queen Anne’s Revenge. I was thoroughly wet and angry, and I saw nothing extraordinary in decayed timber. When we got back, he seemed very smug. I couldn’t hold back. I shouted at Moros that if one couldn’t travel back in time, there was no point in teleporting at all. I scornfully told him that there was nothing of interest in the present day. He unfortunately did not possess powers of time travel.

I hadn’t seen him for a long time since our last fight, and was not in the mood for another instant icy bath. Moros put on his wise-man look, with droopy eyelids and all, and said, “Today we shall visit No-Man’s Mall.” I nearly choked with laughter when I heard this ridiculous name, but the old geezer was unperturbed. He said “you and your kind, you are very interested in malls, are you not? I will take you to the greatest and most unique one in the world.” I mumbled something like “No thanks, I’d rather you took me to Ambience in Gurgaon” but he wasn’t listening. He grabbed my hand. As I sighed yet again, we vanished in a puff of smoke. We reappeared moments later, lo and behold, in the middle of some god-forsaken desert. “I should have known”, I wailed. “Delhi’s sun obviously wasn’t good enough to kill me. So you brought me here for a faster demise.” Moros snorted, which was in itself a rather depressing noise. “This is a beach, idiot.”  I looked around and to my surprise saw a huge waterfront stretching for miles. “Okay, so it’s a beach. You plan to drown me again?” I was still quite suspicious, as the memory of our previous misadventure hadn’t yet faded. “That,” said Moros, “is the Mediterranean.” “Yes, I’ve heard of that. Are we in Africa?” Moros scratched his scruffy beard and thought about that. “Well, yes and no. We’re in Giza.” “That’s Egypt! We are in Africa. Well at least I can see the Pyramids.” Then Moros hastily corrected himself and said “No, no I meant GAZA.”

After that last sentence I just stared at him with my mouth hanging open for a few seconds, and he kept smiling insipidly. “You brought me to a WAR ZONE?” “Au contrare,” said he, lifting a gnarly forefinger, “this is…well okay this is a war zone.  But it’s also a nice place, I mean, was…” He saw the time travel issue was in danger of being raised, so he stopped talking. And started walking. The only options I had were to follow him and hope he’d take me home, or to find a phone booth and explain to my parents how I ended up in Gaza. I chose the route less likely to get me killed.

As I caught up with Moros, he started talking again. “The No-Man’s Mall is run by a very experienced businessman called Mammon. He started off as a hawker along the Berlin Wall, then expanded as his profits increased quite a bit during the Cold War. Now he’s found a huge piece of land here in the Gaza strip. His enterprise has numerous franchises throughout the globe, but most of his profits come from the popular Mall.” “Why is it so popular?” I wondered. “You’ll see when we get there”, said Moros with a sly grin. And then we did get there. Right in the middle of a jungle of rubble and dilapidated houses, stood a gigantic shopping complex towering over the area like a malevolent mountain. There were posters of every brand I had ever seen or heard of, displayed on every inch of the mall’s exterior.  We went inside to be relieved of the merciless heat. The mall’s air-conditioning, which in Delhi would have been welcome, somehow gave me goosebumps in this place. The mall was crowded, filled with people of every ethnicity. Moros seemed to read my mind. “Very secular, is it not?” I nodded, and looked at some of the shops. I saw the usual brand logos, but noticed something odd. The names of the companies were garbled.  McDonald’s and Burger King logos were set together in an eatery called ‘Blacking Modern Drugs’. Google was set within Microsoft in a messy symbol which made both illegible. Their store was called ‘Some Forgot Logic’. Apple had it’s own store, a large one at that. But instead of the bitten apple symbol was a bitten globe, which made me uneasy. There were countless such perversions of every major brand in the world. And there were some stores that had never existed, like  ’The Everyday Arms Corp.’ a supermart selling weapons. People were buying them as they would buy groceries. An ad above the store read, “Get your neighbours before they get you!”.

By this time I was positively freaked out and opened my mouth to ask Moros to take me home. I looked back and saw a well-built man in a suit standing next to him. I couldn’t tell you what he looked like, because every time I blinked, his face seemed to change. Sometimes it was Slavic. Then it changed into Persian. Then just as quickly, it became Indian. This only served to increase my bewilderment. The only thing that remained unchanged were his eyes. Bright, piercing eyes that looked straight at me as though gauging my worth in a sale-mart. Only later did I remember the word for it- avarice. Moros quietly introduced him. “This is Mr. Mammon, founder of The No-Man’s Mall.” Mammon laughed. It was an eerie, false laughter that reminded me of someone laughing at a joke at his expense, while plotting a payback. He noticed my uneasiness and said, ” You must be wondering about the..unusual nature of the stores in my Mall.” I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything. Mammon chuckled. “Have you seen the people who shop here? I give them what they want, and they keep coming back for more. Every time they want something better, I change the brands to suit their needs. That way, I have a loyal customer base, and I get new ones every day. The word spreads quickly, you see.” (Like a disease, I thought). “Well I wouldn’t use that metaphor,” Mammon said, and I saw a glint in his eyes. So he was reading my mind. “No, a disease spreads misery. But people here are happy. See?” He pointed out the burger joint.

As I moved closer, I saw one of the customers. He ordered a small burger with fries, then consumed it at a speed even I couldn’t have matched. He looked up at the menu again, and ordered a larger one with fries and coke. This time he finished it even faster. He looked up again, with a confused and dissatisfied expression. And ordered two mega-burger meals, which simply disappeared before my eyes. I was shocked when I saw the man get up again, and order a meal to feed an entire family. I looked in horror at Mammon, who was grinning. “You see? I always have something better to offer, and so they’ll always keep buying.” I backed away from him, frantically looking around for Moros. But Mammon wasn’t finished. “Wait, you haven’t heard the best part. You see in my travels I’ve..erm… collected many people, people who weren’t wanted by any country or couldn’t be claimed. I keep them busy in running my mall, and also to keep buying from it. I usually prospect for my staff and customers in areas where anarchy has overthrown law, order and sanity.” He kept advancing towards me, and I kept backing away, barely listening to him. “So you see, I usually find them lying dead on the streets, and I reanimate them. So they technically don’t exist.” At this he flashed his teeth in what was a self-congratulatory smile. And I found myself backed against a wall, in a mall full of dead or enslaved people. Mammon was barely an inch from me, and he asked, “would you like to join my staff?” Just then a familiar gnarly hand grabbed my shoulder and I felt myself dissolving into a puff of smoke.

I blinked and found myself back in my room. Moros the moron was sitting coolly in a chair in front of me. I, on my part, was shivering all over and sweating profusely. I managed to ask, “What was that place?” Moros smiled and said, “I took you across space, to another world exactly like this one, but with slightly more greed and indifference in it. Was it as enlightening as travelling back in time?” He smiled coldly. But then it turned into a sad sigh.

Classic Cuttack

I find it difficult not to draw parallels between Narayan’s Malgudi and Orissa’s Cuttack. I’d call it the sleepytown with one eye open. True, Cuttack has seen development, but it still retains the flavour of village life. Even though I was staying in perhaps the most modern part of cuttack, the old-gold atmosphere is evident. The people over there are generally simple and honest, unlike dilli, which is buzzing with con-men like myself. Even though its Bhubaneshwar that’s called the temple city, you’ll find that every sub-lane in cuttack has its own little temple. And mind, people are fanatically religious, no exceptions (Yet another resemblance to Malgudi). My mamaji’s old house, i.e. our ancestral house, has the perfect haunted house look, with authentic cobwebs and unused rooms. I find that quite appealing. I like to think there’s loads of stuff  there in locked trunks that contain the key to my family history.

On the last day of my stay there, I went on a short photography tour. We (meaning my mamiji, my masi, my ma and my cousins) went to a few mandirs, and to my mom’s childhood school, where she excitedly pointed out the tree she used to love climbing, and the playground where she used to beat up boys while playing cricket. Pretty nostalgic, right?  I was taking some pics of the river Kathjodi(its dried up in summers, but should it ever flood its banks entire cuttack will be washed clean.) when a peasant woman with a small child came up to me and asked if I would take a photo of her and her baby. I obliged, and she blushed on seeing her pic on my digicam screen. She then asked if I could give her the picture. I explained that I lived in Delhi, and there wasn’t time to get all the pictures developed. She said I could get the ‘reel’ developed nearby. I told her it was a digital camera and thus had no reel. She appeared puzzled at how a camera took pictures without a reel.

The thing is, cuttack being right next to bhubaneshwar, all the attention of development has gone to the capital, and cuttack has been largely ignored. The people don’t complain. When they want to buy expensive or exclusive stuff, they go to bhubaneshwar. So cuttack remains cuttack, inching towards the future, leaving a trail of nostalgia. For my own selfish motives, I hope it stays this way. Time stops at Cuttack, I’d love to say.