Twixt Chawl And Mall

9:35, En route on a BEST bus , attried in jeans and shirt befor she gets into a uniform

The girls have learned not to gawk in the mall, buzzing with youngsters having more money than they can handle. Most men have earrings, blond hair or both. The only women in salwar kurtas are accompanying anorexic daughters in next to nothing. Lubaina, who wore only salwar kurtas or what she calls "midis", bought pants for the first time when she got a job here two years ago. Now, of course, she wears pants with a T-shirt (another first) everyday. She still ties her hair tightly behind and clearly follows instructions to talk only as much as is necessary to men. But she's learnt to slip in a "that looks great" around the trial rooms and has now begun to feel lost without the lipstick she's supposed to wear to work though she'd never worn it before as she had heard "lipstick makes your lips black".

A supervisor in the mens's section,she's learnt to handle cross-dressers

Lubaina is now a supervisor in the men's section and knows how to deal with cross-dressers; she's already seen two.She's learned to put jewellery on to male mannequins and turn down customers who ask her out but she still doesn't know how to deal with couples who get into the trial room together.

Inderjit is a wisp of a teenager with a shy, heavily dimpled smile which she has learned to subdue to look practised in these hip, adult settings. Six months ago when interviewed for the job, on her 18th birthday, Inderjit faked that she knew what lingerie meant so she could get the only job available—at the lingerie counter. That was also her first trip to a market with real flooring and a TV screen that showed her. Inderjit, who has never cut her hair and even has a dagger under her clothes like an observant Sikh, now independently handles a counter that's bigger than the house she lives in with seven members of her family. She says she's too shy to take back discounted mall lingerie for herself, her mother or her sister but at work she's practised at looking deadpan while delivering lingerie in the trial room to customers who're too diffident to walk around holding it, in public.

Now, a middle-aged Arab man is flashing a photo of her wrinkle-nosed smile on his mobile phone. Yesterday, he bought her lingerie counter down, for his wife and daughter, and is now back for seconds. She has probably never held a man's hand but can now identify from people's faces if they're actually looking for honeymoon wear but can't say it. "I like it when men come to buy lingerie," she says. "They buy whatever we ask them to."


She and other age-challenged staffers have managed to look beyond their years as they mother middle-aged customers, run their homes, educate themselves, look after sick parents and follow the cardinal rule of the mall—keep smiling. Inderjit's tempo driver father stopped working two years ago; 18-year-old Nisha Baptiste goes to college from seven to nine in Vasai, about 40 km away, before her 11 o'clock shift; 18-year-old Ruheena Shaikh is paying her way through college and tuitions. Nisha Makhija, 21, earns the only salary in her family of five and reaches home to battle her out-of-work father every night. Added to work pressure is the pressure to still be the child at home. Lubaina's uncle, an auto driver, says he circles the big bad mall to keep track of her.

Others said they could have worked at higher salaries in call centres if their parents let them stay out late. Inderjit feels guilty when she walks back after a long day because she can imagine her father's face, angry and worried, dug into the night, waiting for her.

Welcome relief comes in the basement where Lubaina's the champ at carrom

Relief comes in the basement, which is a staff area where they actually get that community most young people hang out with. Inderjit brings lunch for Rizwaan, who lives alone in a chawl, Lubaina is the champ at carrom and the walls are filled with cartoons of the store manager and other higher-ups who push them to meet sales targets looking skywards.

Of course, the targets are crazy, Inderjit has to sell in a day what she'll earn in a year but meeting them is a high too. It's such a thrill in that teenage way to get those hyper-cool teenagers they want to be to wear what they want them to. Shane Meyers, 22, who has blond streaks and an earring, is here with his girl-friend. "I love coming here because there's a lot of young people here, it's cool," he says. That's kind of why Nisha who's at the other end of the counter is here too. She and Lubaina now enjoy the loud '80s pop music and are still in love with the glass lifts that reach out for ceilings way higher than they've seen at chawls with lofts. That's still better than what Lubaina's parents do when they're here. They're more entranced by the people who come here than anything on the racks. Inderjit's mother dismisses the mall as that place for people who're too rich.

So, it's this world they slip back into at night. Lubaina's father edits every conversation she's had and fixes everyone she met, in retrospect. He's convinced that's what makes her so good at work. But of course she cuts out bits; everything would shock him. So, she waits for him to go so she can start dancing. After all, she's a pro at traipsing in and out of different worlds.

All About The Zippies
APJ Abdul Kalam :'500 Million Young Will Transform India' ! Azim Premji: Writing Is On The Wall: Get The A,B,C Right ! Paromita Shastri : TenderShoots ! Suveen K. Sinha : AgeOf The Zippie ! Anil Thakraney: Moving To Gorakhpur With All Guns Blazing ! Manu Joseph: The Generation Why ! Velu Shankar: Teflon-CoatedBubble Wrap Cocoons ! Ajith Pillai: DumbedDown? Who? ! Sanghamitra Chakraborty: TheNext Stage Of Human Evolution ! Indrajit Hazra: 'PotentialGenius'? Keep The Tag Intact ! Anil Ambani: "If You Dream, You Can Do It" ! Saumya Roy: Twixt Chawl And Mall Sanjoy Chatterjee: The World Is My Oyster ! Zippies: WhatThey Want ! Javed and Farhan Akhtar: 'We All Have Our Struggles' !  Sadanand Menon: MadCow Disease Of Self-Consumption