Empty Spaces
It’s an early Saturday morning. I sit alone in a mall in a far flung part of town. The mannequins are friendly enough, slightly impersonal but smiling politely anyway. The cleaning crew is at the far end of a cavernous hall. Everything gleams. The shiny stainless steel and glass lifts arrive silently, emptily. There is nowhere I need to go. The main hall has an impressive glass dome which is having a hard time coping with the volume of rain hammering down. It has sprung a leak and a puddle forms on the gleaming marble floor, treacherous and invisible. The piped music can’t keep up with the rain either. The thunder of the rain is soothing and threatening all at once. I’m glad to be inside though my footsteps echo in that vast emptiness.
A few people trickle in, drenched and shivering in the sudden cool, dry inside. The security crew are natty in their yellow t shirts and black trousers. The lifts continue to go up and down, eerily silent. I wonder uneasily about the entity that is calling them up and sending them down without ever riding in them.
The entire space is cheerfully artificial. There is not even a token attempt at greenery. A few plastic roses desultorily climb one solitary pillar but they have long since given up the pretence at reality. They are proudly pink and plastic, never a day of rain or sunshine to mar their existence. The effort at brightening up the otherwise austere space seems to have been abandoned soon after these were installed. This place could double up as a hospital lounge, such is its stern sterility and sparkling clean appearance.
Some life stirs. The escalators come on, so does the Mall Map. The food court beckons…here too, it is unrelenting in its plasticity. I have to admire the Mall management for not compromising on their anti-green stand. Most other public places feel the need to have the token rock garden or miserable palm to appease the pesky environmentalists. Not this one. The mall walkers are arriving. I worry about those invisible puddles but they appear to be regulars, deftly negotiating their way around drips from the roof and resulting slippery spots on the floor. Upstairs, the food court is getting lively. Knots of teenagers are huddled around tables. Elderly couples sit companiably over cups of coffee. A mother and son sit down next to me. The little boy rests his head on the table and stares sightlessly past me. The mother is on the phone, anxious and upset. I wonder what has brought them out in this weather.
The mall is about to open. The lights come on in all the shops; drifting out of my favourite destination for creams and lotions is the most delicious fragrance. The shutters are half way up now, the sales girls touching up their lipstick and mascara. They are languid, these young girls. There is no urgency, no hustle. They are here. The customers will come. It’s a certainty. After all, who wants to be out in such stormy weather?
Coffee beckons. The mall is no longer still, no longer echoing with the sound of my footsteps. It greets the incoming crowd with bright lights and happy fragrances. It is what it is. An escape from the real world thundering outside, the dirty, grimy, black and grey and green world of unpleasant smells and harsh sun and unwelcome showers of rain. This offers a refuge from life for many people in these modern times. A cool, calm, clean oasis made of plastic and chrome and steel. Just entirely without soul.
When I leave, the rain is gone, leaving behind a horde of newly hatched flies and steam. It’s a relief to step back out of that alien, sterile hall and back into the city.