Fluid it may be, but middle-class guilt is a very powerful thing in India. Doing something morally questionable is no big deal, but to be seen doing it is forbidden. That’s why you have implicit code words and phrases: jugaad , chai-paani , ‘under the table’, ‘compromise’. A pristine exterior is a prerequisite for depravity.
Around a decade or so ago, Palika Bazaar, in the heart of the capital at Connaught Place, used to be one such haven of decadence, a maze of circular alleys, each side packed beyond capacity with pint-sized shops. It was New Delhi’s best-kept secret, literally stashed underground, with the city showing off its Lutyens heritage just above with phony pride. The ear-cleaners on the Connaught Place lawns would overwhelm unsuspecting passers-by with the wonders of their rustic tradition of manual cleansing, sometimes going as far as sticking a finger in your ear. The guys selling wallets and hats outside would, without abandon, shove their hands into your pockets to prove a point if they had to.
A fight with a shopkeeper, stemming from a difference in opinion over pricing models, was always imminent. An accidental shoulder collision could well be construed as a war cry. It was dangerous; things could go downhill in a heartbeat. Guilt was an implied experience, as you walked down the stairs into the dungeon-like market, the awareness that you were doing something wrong ever-present. It was hard to imagine globalisation ever reaching this little spot of decay — those shops, with their pirated products: clothes, shoes, gaming consoles, game CDs, DVDs of new films, porn, sex toys, assorted electronics, flamboyant lighters and keychains, scarves and accessories, binoculars and helmets, their walls chipped, the shopkeepers jaded, the patrons always sheepish. There was a comforting smell of piss and sweat that consumed all visitors. You were complicit in the illicitness.
But the beast of modernisation has had its way. Today, Palika Bazaar is a sanitised shopping complex facing Gate No. 6 of the Rajiv Chowk Metro Station, all its edges smoothed out and rounded off. The Staircase of Guilt has been replaced by an actual escalator, imagine.
The exhaust systems and the central air-conditioning stave off the rancid smells of a simpler time to the extent where the air is almost fresh. Not damp, faintly pungent, lingering, discoloured, but fresh. All the shops have the exact same format: a green strip with the name, followed by a little box with the shop number. The whole market is well-lit, and it is a truth well-established that no shady business can ever occur under bright lights.
The place has a constant buzz about it — literally so, since every third shop is now a kind of tattoo parlour. You have families walking around, fathers swaddling babies and checking out shoes and shirts, contemplating getting a tattoo.
It seems a shame at first, as if the remnant of a forgotten period has withered away. But then you realise what the original purpose of Palika Bazaar was for an urban, middle-class, privileged teenager: it was discovery. There was guilt but there was also the anticipation of Something New. Shop No. 13 (or 14 or 15), which doesn’t even exist anymore, had this one guy at the back who had a massive collection of MP3 CDs of music that you couldn’t find anywhere else, which led to many accidental discoveries that have stayed with me in the decade-and-a-half since. One particular store upstairs would always have the “cool” international cinema CDs and DVDs — films I would read about on the internet and then buy. Anything over Rs. 100 was over-priced.
Every third store-owner would accost you with a proposition of pornography. “Triply” was a common colloquialism, as was “blue film”, alongside some other less flattering euphemisms. They’d say it in hushed tones, and then look away and lure you in. I was too shy to buy that stuff, but it was tempting. Every new Bollywood release would reach Palika Bazaar on Thursday, a day before its actual release. It was a shameless exhibition of piracy, but in those years, concepts of intellectual property mattered less than affordability.
In the new Palika Bazaar, a sparse first floor has a few shops that sell movie CDs, but the prices are a dead giveaway. A Playstation or X-Box CD costs just Rs. 50, the exact price as a decade ago; DVDs of films that came out in the past year or so are priced at Rs. 100; and most shops don’t sell English music any more. Nobody advertises any new movie CDs, but if you ask them nicely they’ll still whip out a print from under the counter.
Palika’s one-time sense of identity actually began to fade with Torrent and fast internet connections and the ongoing elimination of CDs as a viable format for media consumption. These days, you don’t accidentally discover anything; it’s all carefully researched and vetted.
Sure, it sucks in an abstract way, but what’s heartening is that the market hasn’t crumbled and evaporated into irrelevance. Instead, it has given itself a makeover, transforming into an affordable shopping mall. There’s even a small café selling samosa s inside, as well as a public toilet (when did we start appropriating evil Western concepts like public sanitation? Next, they’ll tell us we shouldn’t litter.)
It’s mainstream now and, by all accounts, thriving — a testament to some kind of resilience. They still have fake T-shirts, stolen cameras and jailbroken iPhones, but they are squirreled away behind the outward signs of modernity. Like they’ve moved with the times, maybe because they had to, but it’s a cultural shift all the same.
The whole thing can be unsettling, like how there’s barely any haggling anymore. As we all know, bargaining with shopkeepers is never about the money but all about pride and ego. You say 100, I say 50, and we settle at 75. You still make an obscene profit; I still get a good deal. And we both walk away feeling victorious. The concept is archaic, but it has a comforting familiarity. So when I found a fake branded T-shirt at Shop No. 76, which has been around forever, priced at Rs. 750, I instinctively asked the guy to quote me a reasonable amount. Nothing doing, he said. So I staged a fake walkout, assuming I’d be called back and presented with a Rs. 50 discount at the very least. He called my bluff. My pride wouldn’t let me turn around. I was disappointed, but I thought it was symbolic of Palika’s modern ways.
Or maybe I’m just terrible at bargaining.
Akhil Sood is a freelance culture writer from New Delhi who wishes he’d studied engineering instead.
