The Mall Malady

It was in 2005 I first stepped into a Mall. My friend Koshy took us (Anna,Renjan, Susam and I) to the Forum Mall in Bangalore. I was shocked by most of the things I saw there. As a teacher of Physics, I was dismayed by the criminal waste of scarce energy. The massive edifice was centrally air-conditioned.  Escalators were working all the time with not many people going up or coming down. I found any number of window shoppers and very few really buying anything. The only place where I saw something happening was the eateries. There were any number of boys and girls in their twenties devouring junk food with a vengeance.

Back home I was very much disturbed. Quantifying something is not my cup of tea. Yet I thought on the following lines. Using the electrical power wasted by one mall in a day you can supply electricity to at least 100 typical Indian villages for at least two months. I thought of the hapless, unprotected  adivasis who have been uprooted from their traditional habitat for the construction of dams to produce hydroelectric power , only to be indiscriminately wasted in make believe  worlds like Malls. I did not share my concern then even with Renjan. But I felt very happy when, some two years later, he told me that he could not enjoy the scenes at the Mall as he too was hugely saddened by the monumental wastage of energy which eventually contributed to an accelerated global warming.

An argument in favour of Malls is that you get everything at one stop. But then do you buy everything every day? How many of us go to a mall at least 5 times a month to buy a pair of Adidas shoes, a pair of Ray-ban sun glasses, a Samsung Galaxy, a Sony camera and a kilogram each of potato and onion??

In 2010 we were in Mumbai in connection with Renjan's joining the TIFR. In the evening we were at the Nariman Point and I couldn’t believe  that I was in India. Here again I was shocked by the energy wasted. If the power there was switched for 10 or 15 minutes that would suffice to light up hundreds of villages for one or two months.

Back home I stopped the habit of switching off the fans and lights that were not needed because I realized that things have reached a flash point and individual efforts are meaningless. This is one of the problems of quantifying a thing. Don’t quantify you happy-go-lucky wanderer at a Mall !