Across the water from Kochi is Wilingdon Island. Across the water from Wilingdon Island is Ernakalum. Ernakalum is the bustling, crowded, modern complement to the slow, spacious, colonial Kochi.  In Ernakalum there are two malls – Central Square and Lulu. Lulu is the newer of the two – a three story behemoth that has everything, and more, of what you need or want. Inside there is a hypermarket that is always busy. They sell all kinds of food – rice in bulk, imported chocolate, fresh fruits and vegetables, white flour white sugar cakes that rise as high as a small child, and an expansive and generous deli section with a vast selection of cold meats. There are, of course, local inflections to the taste here – there are pickles as far as the eye can see from lime to mango to brinjal to fish. And there are hardly any ‘international’ foods in sight. That said, when I visit one Sunday afternoon, there is a crush of people grabbing at pita bread that has been freshly baked on site. It is a chaotic, excessive place. 

Mall culture is not, of course, ‘Indian’. In this incarnation it has its roots in post-war America, even as department stores like Au Bon Marches and general stores all over the world existed before. But the mall is distinct in part because it is the logical, if absurd, expression of this type of retail and also because it is a self-contained ecosystem, a type of air-conditioned simulated reality. If the weekend crowds are anything to go by, there is a rabid hunger for the mall here as the middle class expands and people want to spend their disposable income. This adoption of Americana from the burger and pizza franchises that populate the food court to the movie selections that dominate the multiplex suggests that people have replaced the British metropole with another. But this forgets the fact that consumers negotiate and make choices, and that Lulu is owned and run by a consortium of Malayalee businessmen. Capitalism like this is as rootless as it is appealing to ‘the masses’.  

The retail market in India is crowded – there is a whole strata of people with small stores that sit somewhere between the mall and the fixers. There are stores everywhere you look, from a guy selling bike tyres to another selling mops to yet another that specialises in check shirts and applique denim. There is economic activity at every level of society and the mall is simply the latest addition on top of that commercial bedrock. The small speciality stores however, are the entrepreneurial working class, the petit bourgeois. These are the retailers that make up the bulk of the economy when it comes to what you see and who is employed.  

There is store like this down the street from where I live, near a roundabout, where Lakshman sits until late in the evening. He has tonic water, soap, chocolate, brooms, eggs, toilet paper – everything that one might need from a corner store.  He has a trim white moustache and a closely cropped head of hair, always dressed in a pressed white shirt and white dhoti with gold trim.  

Lakshman has a human touch. He greets his customers with a friendly wave and is always keen to speak. He serves visitors and locals alike, from backpackers to school kids to old people looking for tea and biscuits. He is, in a sense, a sort of anti-mall in that he is a small-scale grocer rooted in Kochi.  He says:  

I have run this store for thirty five years. I have been here for a long time now. Before here I was up in Palace Road on a very busy street, near lots of other stores. But I was just working there, in a general store. It was not my own place. But now I have many customers also, I have people from everywhere coming in to buy from me.  

Lakshman is well to do and well read. When you pass by his place of business during the day, he is often there reading about current events and politics. When he discovers I am from Australia he not only acknowledges cricket with an in-depth and documentary eye, but also seems to understand some of the intricacies of immigration in a way that I had not expected.  

In India, the issue of immigration is more profoundly felt on the borders to the North – Tibetan refugees who have been coming ever since China occupied the mountain region in 1950, and more pressingly, for the millions of Bangladeshis who have fled ecological uncertainty. For Lakshman, the issue here is one of integrity and though he is quiet in his demeanour, he believes the BJP, which is the Hindu right national ruling party, is right to crack down on the 20 million illegal, mainly Muslim, asylum seekers in Assam. It is this scale though that is incomprehensible for me. The number of people from Bangladesh alone who have come here seeking refuge, is greater than all of Australia.  

But what are people looking for? What constitutes a safe if not relaxed and comfortable life away from harm and ill? And how might that be found when hostilities are based on the result of categories that are not quite real? Those are the questions that we need to ask ourselves as the malls continue to reach around the globe and we continue to occupy places that might be better shared if we opened ourselves to an idea of what a better world might be for all kinds of people who have no place at all.