The Tamasha Stores

While eating remains the number one obsession of us Hyderabadis, shopping comes a close second. So when Hyderabadis aren’t doing anything particularly useful they are found to be either in hotels eating like the world is going to run out of food or in stores shopping like there’s no tomorrow. In fact I tend to think that these two activities do take up a lot of the Hyderabadi’s day leaving him little time for anything else which is why so little work gets done here. Naturally it isn’t only the restaurant scene in Hyderabad that I’m very interested in but also shopping and stores where it all happens that makes for equally fascinating study.

Of late in Hyderabad newer stores are popping up with a regularity that almost matches the rate at which restaurants are opening their doors in Jubilee Hills. Last Friday the papers were full of ads about the opening of another new store called ‘Kalyanakanchi’ that was being inaugurated by the actress Genelia. Surprisingly, the model for 'Kalyanakanchi' turns out to be Sonali Bendre. Here I have to make a confession. Sonali, at a certain stage of my life, was someone I could have done anything for. Here again I digress a bit. Sonali, by the way, also finds place in my novel. While everyone else was crazy about the oleaginous ‘dhak, dhak’ dame, it was the svelte Sonali I was enamored of until she went and married that Behl chap, a producer who unfortunately doesn’t have a single hit to his name till date . It makes me wonder how he is able to look after poor Sonali. No wonder she is forced to anchor shows like Indian Idol on television and do some modeling here and there for the kind of stores with names like ‘Kalyanakanchi.’ Sigh.

Anyway, ‘Kalyanakanchi’ happens to be yet another of those mega stores from Tamil Nadu that have now completely taken over Hyderabad. There was a time when women folk from loaded families used to travel all the way to places like Kanchi and Madurai to buy silk saris by the dozen whenever there was a marriage in the family. This must have prompted the owners of the stores to open their branches in Hyderabad. Hence the profusion of stores like the recently opened ‘South India Mall’, ‘Kalanikethan,’ ‘Chennai Shopping Mall’ and so on, all from Rajni land. A side effect is that these new stores have edged out the RS Brothers, JC Brothers, the Bommana Brothers, and Chandana Brothers crowd much to their consternation. I’m glad though because no day seemed to pass without finding a dozen glossy, colorful pamphlets in one’s newspaper which though irritating is a change from the drab pamphlets of schools, summer camps, yoga courses etc that one finds in the papers these days.

Looking at these stores from Chennai fills me with awe. It appears to me that the women folk in Chennai don’t seem to shop in mega stores unless surrounded by a million lights and chandeliers which is how all these stores are. At some of these stores (which for some reason invariably have branches in Kukatpalli and Patny) I have even spotted a couple in traditional attire greeting the customers at the entrance. I haven’t yet gone to one but sometime soon I will as soon as I muster up enough courage to enter because these stores give the impression that they won’t let you out of the door unless you buy something more than socks or hankies.