Malls, Me And Catch-22

I recently realized that wherever I go, malls follow.

My mall karma started when I was working in Ramco Systems in Chennai, India. Located in the basement of Apex Plaza in Nungambakkam High Road in the late ‘nineties, my office was adjacent to Landmark. Now a part of the TATA Group with countrywide presence through several stores selling books and music, Landmark was then a single bookstore. When its management decided to enter music, the store needed more space and took over our side of the floor. And out we went – to the third floor of the same building.

Then came my stint at the headquarters of Zensar Technologies in Pune, India, in 2003. My office was located in a building on Pune-Nagar Road that was a famous landmark in Pune for several decades. Although I moved on from Zensar in 2004, the office location remained on my radar since it’s close to my home in Kalyaninagar. Around 2005 or so, Zensar sold this plot and moved to a new facility. For the next 3-4 years, we were seeing some massive construction activity happening there on a “stealth” mode. Only around six months ago did it become widely known that this was the site of one ‘Phoenix Market City’, a mall. And so it turned out that yet another of my office locations became a mall.

While I haven’t been able check the current state of some of my ex-offices in Ruwi (Muscat, Oman), Niederrad (Frankfurt, Germany), Dreieich (near Frankfurt) and Marsh Wall (London, UK), I won’t be surprised if I were to find that they’ve made way for glitzy new malls.

Readers of the iconic Catch-22 might recall the character of Chief White Halfoat: Every place Chief White Halfoat pitched his tent, oil companies would sink a well and hit oil. When I’d read the book around thirty years ago, I found its characters hilarious but never imagined that I’d come across their likeness in real-life. Around 2-3 years ago, I started having second thoughts when I read about  Charles Tyrwhitt and COBRA. Now, with malls following one after the other of my offices, Catch-22 started to seem not only increasingly plausible but chillingly autobiographical!

I’ve decided to take the bull by the horns with my latest move. My present office in Regus Business Center is actually located inside a – ahem – mall (Connaught Place in Pune, India)! Instead of malls following me, I’ve started following malls and succeeded in reversing my mall karma!