Appearances ! Oh Chandigarh !

 Appearances ! Oh Chandigarh !

Dinesh K Kapila

Appearances. The real self. The perceived self. The public self for the world to see, sometimes multiple selves. That is us. Surya felt only Chandigarh took it at times to another level.
Surya was with his wife Annie at a house in a tony locality in Chandigarh. Visiting. For those who do not know, Chandigarh has a clear cut demarcation. Here localities are called Sectors. Sector 1 to Sector 30 are directly maintained by the Chandigarh Administration, they are visibly cleaner. Sector 8, Sector 9, Sector 6 are viewed as exclusive. It’s deeply rooted, this degree of exclusivity. The accents are apparently plusher and softer and lifestyles more lah de la, that is the refrain.
Then come the other sectors. As you cross over from Sector 30 onwards, maintained by a private company, the perception itself changes, so goes the wisdom. One old timer, a hard nosed businessman from Sector 6 once told Surya, you guys in the Sectors such as 33,34, 35 do not even know the cooling impact of the Sukhna Lake in summer as also the uplifting impact of living among Ministers and the like. It justifies the hefty premium any day. One businessman, settled in a large new bungalow in Sector 35 or Sector 36, told Surya, a mistake, he should have moved to the across the Madhya Marg area, here he felt suffocated, And so goes the refrain.
Well, as Surya and Annie sat talking to Vivek and Poonam, Surya took in the drawing room. Subtle but updated discreetly each time they visited. Keeping up came with a cost said Poonam. Vivek and Poonam were both Architects and had made a good name. Surya and Annie were introduced to Kavita, a lively, articulate and well travelled lady. Strangely, her travels were all abroad as they realised while they chatted, visits to Delhi and Mumbai were only for shopping at exclusive stores or malls. The rest of India as per her had only dust and crowds to offer and she needed solitude to recharge, solitude and serenity were understandably missing in India. And too many of those you never thought would travel were travelling in India, it just took the fun away.
Over coffee and tea, the talking was getting lively when suddenly Kavita jumped up saying it was time to pick up her kids from school. Surya, who rather liked the gossip he was getting to hear, it was all rather juicy scandals, of local celebrities and the lah de lah’s, protested its only 1230, what is the hurry. But hurry it was. As Kavita left, Poonam quietly said, “Bhaiya, Kavita had to go early, she is a ‘Blueberry Mom”. Surya, a quiet focused types, posted all over India in his career, looked puzzled. Poonam burst out laughing, ‘now that you are retired, get acquainted with the real Chandigarh’. It then dawned that a few upper crust ladies had a well chalked out routine to pick up kids from this rather high profile school. If it was not the Blueberry School then it was another fruit with Berry in it, Surya recollected later. In Kavita’s case it meant changing over from the Mahindra XUV 700 she drove regularly to her BMW, a change in sunglasses and footwear, a slight touch up of make up and then the final step was to put on the smile and mannerisms for the school. That was the way.
Surya felt it was as if pieces were falling into place. He got to share his perspective. He was just recently a sort of Head Volunteer at a Charity headed by a friend focused on the deprived and their empowerment, a professional charity. Once the volunteers decided to scale up their activities so as to enable more donations. There were a series of events, at the main event four ladies drove up. Surya knew only one of them, a Mrs High Profile who knew all who mattered. The introduction to him and his friend was quaint and stayed with him, Mrs High Profile said, “we are all from Sector so and so’ silence, Surya waited for the names and details to follow but then realised the introduction itself was in the words “we are all from Sector so and so’, a rather very high profile sector. He could only do a Polite Namaskar and retreat quietly.
Vivek and Poonam were laughing away along with Annie as they heard this and came out with more stories of their own. Annie had one of her own. Once every two years or so they traveled abroad. In one country, on a day tour, they ran into fellow Indians. A couple turned out to be from Chandigarh and that too a bit of a high profile sector, there but not exactly there. They were both legal eagles. One focused on cases from Punjab and the spouse from Haryana. They decided to have lunch together, the couple, Digvijay and Vanita, were gracious, talkative and frank. A delight to sit with. Once Surya and Annie responded to their questions that they ventured abroad only once in a while, Sanjay and Vanita stated it was their compulsion, “de rigueur’ , the trends demanded it for practising lawyers and doctors and the like.
They went their way post lunch but Annie noticed their clothes were different after lunch. Surya would not agree. The next day they met up again, both having opted for the same day tour. Post lunch Annie was firm, the clothes were different and well, Surya agreed. The clothes were different. Nicely, gently, quietly, the question was put across, more like, in this fine weather, why the change of clothes. Turned out, Digvijay and Vanita always carried a backpack for a day tour, these always contained a change of clothes. The idea was that the snaps would be on social media in a structured flow and a tempered calibrated sequence. The snaps looked better, the impression was better and it always appeared as if they were travelling to varied locale at different times and days. This gave Annie and Surya enough material about trends and social media and the consequences to mull over the rest of their tour.
And Surya recollected, it gets even better. A young man along with his business partner decided to sound him out one day. A sort of use of his mind as a blackboard. For a start up focused on our deep rooted craving to be seen with the latest bag or watch. By the way, this happened frequently with Surya, his having to be a blackboard and then to be wiped clean. The youngsters had a brilliant thought, a business built on discretion, confidentiality and connections. Deposit cash, rent a premium watch or bag, more the deposit, more the products to rotate or days to keep. Brilliant. Simply. They watched the trends and inclinations, then buy into trends and sell the products out of favour, the rest simply falls into place. The customer gets to be noticed with varied premium products, they earn the cash. A happy exchange if ever. This after a costly education abroad. They might as well have studied here only. And invested in this business.
The game is really exciting to observe, said Surya to Annie. The city was hosting three governments, that too in a region prone to living it up and living it up grandly, money earned legally and then better if earned any which way, it had to be incendiary. The levels and the demonstration of the living it up where even the discretion was actually camouflaged as discretion at times !.
Into this complex money and power driven storm were the Ex Indians (former Indian citizens), passport holders of Canada or USA or Australia but obsessed with buying property here. This was a route to then moving into the happening set in whichever segment they perceived they had to be. The degree of importance was in direct proportion to the number of luxury cars or cars of bureaucrats and the real one, Ministers at their houses with the attendant guards and police escorts. Surya actually thought it was the fulfilment of many an unfulfilled ambition, satisfied somewhat by gaining access to the upper crust directly. The best part was using the word Gora (whites) for the Caucasians in their adopted nation, often with a degree of dismissiveness.
Surya and Annie were sharing with Satinder and Pushpinder their experience with the phenomenon called ‘must send the kids abroad’. As it turned out, the kids of both couples stayed on within India and were well placed. However any gathering had them on the defensive, as they often faced direct and straight questions as to what made their kids stay on in India. The pressure could be immense, as Satinder said, it was as though they had not brought up their children well. If they had been good parents, their children too would be leading happy well settled lives abroad. This trend had led to the parents staying alone in Chandigarh and sharing anecdotes about their well to do children abroad. Surya had the experience of seeing the same set of snaps of a six bedroom house of the son a friend at least seven times. With a swimming pool. He had reconciled to the process by now.
Satinder and Pushpinder, Army type with income from lands inherited somewhere in Sangrur, had another insight. Weddings and designers were now a distinct category, the stratosphere was the level. Delhi was the cornerstone, if the caterer was from Chandigarh, it somehow meant it was a level down. One worthy had booked a caterer from Mumbai, that was another level added to the stratosphere. A couple of white girls at the serving stations just added that last part of exclusivity. However, as Surya understood, the economy, always prone to being somewhat range bound, really required such splashes and dos to boost it up. Stagnation was always a sign of staidness and such bashes and trends had multiplier effects. Else what would be there to talk about, to write about.  
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