Gendered moments - veiled and gazed

In what ways you see gender stereotypes being promoted in the late capital extravaganza? Well the straight answer would be through the projections like that of advertisements and numerous other popular media connotations like television and the movies. Yes of course, the glamourous Bollywood movies and songs of late cling on 'traditions'. The spectacle attempts to gloss away and blind the spectators from getting the glimse of what lies underneath.

It is this everydayness that defines gender roles and adds gloss to it. Yes, like everything else gender sells and so does the gender roles.

A security guard and a salesman (probably) make sense of defining how the woman is supposed to stay under the veil, never see outside without it because there is this male gaze afraid by the men themselves. Meanwhile, in a patriarchal world kaleidoscope is riding a car sharing with a couple and a baby fallen asleep on her mother's lap. Protected by the father and advised by the male cab driver about the gender roles and sacrifices of the mother. 

Hangovers in liminality: Kolkata pubs after they are banned

Let us think about a young person belonging to an upwardly mobile middle class of Kolkata having a headache on the Sunday morning. What would be your perception?

There may be many, but the most prominent one might be the like this "the person might have been to a party and drank till midnight to have the  odd headache." This may or may not be the case but this has increasingly become the popular stereotype of the class Kaleidoscope referring to here

The city too often has headaches after the Saturday nights in numerous popular party destinations. One of which happens to the space surrounding City Center I. Kaleidoscope does not want to mention the region as place because the place is never an 'assured' and 'certain' place, but something quasi-known, always changing and difficult to explain space. The space during the making out nights with party becomes even more unknown and uncertain the flow of people and professionals from a variety of places seldom known to each other. Yes there are known people and unknown specialists including the "one night standers" and "professionals" to the regular tireless selves looking for transcendence of everyday existences. Such interfaces gives a liminal dimension to the space and spatial practices.

While Kaleidoscope had to spend some time for a week at the space he could decipher a changing dimension of the number of vehicles parked over the week and sudden rise in the numbers with the weekends. Meanwhile while commuting from his usual office place through an unusual way he could talk to the auto-drivers regarding the changing dimension of the VIP road with closing of bars following a government order which bans bars and pubs from functioning near national highways. There seems to be an inflow of selves and professionals creating an even strong liminality near the city center I.

Meanwhile, there are remains of the time that crisscrosses through the liminality leaving behind a few marks, few hangovers like this:

Farmland, shopping mall and a walk: A futuristic romance

There are avenues of escape even in the midst of concrete jungle. Its not that hard to imagine a mesmerised surrounding engulfing you slowly in a place where you tend to sit for a while, for some time, for eternity. Shopping malls are never thought of such a place where you can romanticise your imagination. These are the places where you are supposed to come, buy, consume the space that surrounds you, eat or get dressed and look beautiful. Once you have finished the cycle you can take a selfie.




That has become part of our late capital, postmodern everydayness. Suddenly the world seems to be unbearably hot for Kaleidoscope so as to compel him to do every meeting with friends at one of those spaces. Being in a shopping mall definitely makes you conscious about how you look, how you walk, how you dress, how you eat and how you talk to others. However, there is one that carries the legacy of its past nearby. Yes, City Centre II, of Kolkata happens to stay at a place close to an existing farmland. You can stand on one of those foot bridges that connects two massive constructions to have a glimpse of it.




Kaleidoscope, happens to be one of those consumers who happened to go to the place for quite some time now. His earlier thought was that the farmland will disappear soon to give rise to high rises. He also thought how ugly the place will become if the other side of the major arterial road consists of highrises. Wouldn't it be a jungle of concretes only? Kaleidoscope asked himself several times. However, as he walked towards Chinar Park there is another wonder. Between high rises plazas there stood a small tract of village life near No-Para. A couple of buildings, a bamboo garden and a peaceful graveyard. Kaleidoscope thought again, how long one can hold on against the land grab. Meanwhile, the greenery continued to add hints of past country feeling in the midst of cacophony, highrises, reflecting glasses.




However, even after all these years, they continue to live on. The bamboo garden, the farm land continue to invite Kaleidoscope to an imagined past, perhaps to an imagined future. What would happen if suddenly, City Centre II, nearby Spencers supermarket and the like disappears from there? Ambuja group or the Goenka group would certainly loose nothing. Afterall, they have effectively rented the space to the latecapital consumers at an "affordable" high cost. They wouldn't mind abandoning a pile of concrete structure and glass panels! Would they?


What would have happened next? Trees would definitely outgrow the fashionable gardens, the farmland will continue to be cultivated. Soon, the greenery will show its signs of invasion to the concretes. Kaleidoscope, nevertheless thinks concrete buildings awaits such moments. There seems to be a pause in that eternal lovemaking  -  the pause is anthropocentric - the source of most the pauses in this planet.  

Glassy Selfie World - Narcissism and Postmodern architectures

The selfie world

The one glassy building:

Once there was a glass building with completely different and attractive looking architecture near Ultadanga - the VSNL building. Kaleidoscope, an aimless roamer in his neighbourhood was for the first time asked by an elderly fellow 'where do you want to take up your job?' Kaleido replied 'at that glass building near ultadanga'. 'Do you know which office is there inside the building' the fellow continued. Kaleidoscope replied 'yes VSNL' 'And what is that?' - yes of course kaleidoscope  didn't know the answer. He said 'i dont know but i would be happy  to see the graveyard nearby from the top of that office during tiffin time!' Kaleidoscope can't  remember the rest of conversation, but he does remember the attraction of that glassy architecture.

Many glassy buildings:

Later on he has seen many of such buildings coming up at different places of his city. Then there came shopping destinations which he thought he would never be able to go to buy. Now that there are many and that he has grown up, he doesn't have much aspirations or options to take up a job in the glassy buildings. However, looking from any of the top buildings, remains an important part of his fantasies.

While these glassy buildings are encroaching his city space, mushrooming everywhere to replace many of the thickly historical experiences, kaleidoscope stsrred seeing them differently.  There is one beside National Library and kaleidoscope is deprived of experiencing the colonial feel which was as precious as the books that took hours to appear from some hidden cave in the library. The postmodern bhasa bhawan replaces National Library. All of a sudden renovation means replacing mosaic floors with tiles, windows with sliding glass panels which reduces the open space to half and walls with wallputty!

Selfie world:

Hence kaleidoscope's world is now converted to a space that reflects your image too often. When you look at them they make you look at yourself - perhaps the front camera clad selfie mode in action everywhere. A world where there is no escape from selfie. You have to be narcissistic, you must be able to fall in love with and then transform the body according to your wish! You are made not to love everything of your body because there are other better bodies to see nearby, and you are more and more trying to change it. Yes, you chose to look 'good' because so many times you are compared with your heroes possessing 'ideal types'. 

As Kaleidoscope looks up beyond the glassy buildings there seems to be the outer atmosphere - the sky. Only attaining that high demands him to go through a series of colourful backlit flexes. Will they ever allow kaleidoscope or for that matter others to trespass them?

Perhaps trespassing is not a possibility without getting into 'properly' shaped. One should not only live but should also die sexy.

The fleeting worlds:

The glassy buildings not only makes your world a selfie world, but also makes you believe the transient nature and lack of permanence and depthless presents. Hence, there once was hometown mall now central mall and no one knows perhaps may be in a few years it would be office space like Gariahat mall. Who knows how long IBM clad DLF I or the like will stay? Glasses are easy to leave as they are! Aren't they? Additionally they easily breakable and replaceable by something new. Therefore, here it is, a transient depthless successions of architectures, or do they redefine depth in time, depth in stratigraphy in a dynamic way in a way we can say postmodern!

Meanwhile, its again the sky from above and a tall building calling! Meanwhile,  kaleodoscope knows attaining that high is restricted as the roofs are dangerous in high buildings. Is it true? or does the glassy world hold you back, because you are supposed to live (consume) and not rush for the sky! Not yet, because you cannoy die till you aren't sexy!

The newly converted central mall in an extreme angle.

Real-Virtual interface: "ViewCart" and postmodern boundaries

It was just another moment of consumerist pursuit when Kaleidoscope met a screen attached to a real cart. Yes, he knows that he indulges the e-carts regularly but this is the thing which makes real-virtual interface -literally possible and takes us to a completely convoluted and juxtaposed world of disappearing boundaries. God bless technocaratic society in which Kaleidoscope like others has to live on.

The ViewCart

The view cart is nothing but a regular shopping cart with a screen attached to his handle. The screen plays continuous series of advertisements. See the photograph:

An imagined story:

Imagine kaleidoscope begins his shopping extravaganza because of his discontent self within the mundane everydayness. Of course, Kaleidoscope is like that 'shop girl' of Adorno who visits the cinema not because she believes that the fantastic events of the cinema could happen to her, but because only in the cinema can she admit that they will not happen to her (Adorno 1992: 49-50). Yes, Kaleidoscope might well buy things which he needs to sustain life and then will glance through things which he cannot buy because of money (or because of health!). He might end up to the wine-shop corner to pick up a pocket friendly bottle to enjoy the transcendence. Now imagine he is carrying all the items in to that "ViewCart" with a screen always displaying one thing or the other. Now he is supposed to "watch steps" as he roam around the shopping mall therefore, the screen of the viewcart would continue to attract his attention. Imagine he bumped onto something and than looking at the front like the dumbest persons in the world to find out what? An attractive person? no, life is not a scripted love story - he will end up watching another advertisement or product which he can never have. Perhaps the attractive person would also remain inaccessible. Kaleidoscope knows my body, your body and availability of it - like most of the others - and of course he doesn't have the guts to offer like Guan Antonio in "Vickey Christina Barcelona"!

Antonio in Vickey Christina Barcelona directed by Woody Allen

The real lack of control:

Enough of the creative imagination inspired by otherwise serious looking Adorno, Kaleidoscope met the Viewcart like many others simultaneously. While he took a photo, others tried to control over it by playing fingers over its screen. Yes, it is not a touch screen device and hence you really cannot manipulate your choice over the device. Hence, no matter how hypocrite such supposedly freedom of choice might entail - even that amount of control is absent with the view cart. It definitely going to take you to the world of the imagined future, possible products and make you act on your possible fantasies. It precisely the moment in history when several boundaries like virtual/real, perceived/imagined, conscious/unconscious, subject/object are dissolving.

What is so special in ViewCart?

The fundamental question, what is so special in ViewCart? especially when we are totally immersed in the late capital rise of consumerism and we are actually embodied by and embodying products, brands, consumptions and what not - in sum the symbolic capital or the class. However, the ViewCart is different in the sense it is more aggressive. ViewCart with the uncontrolled display of the screen gives a consumer a little choice of not to become a consumer. See, when you are inside a shopping destination you are already into the world of products. You live in a virtual air-conditioned environment covered by the walls of products or walls of your images (when there are mirrors) and images of the products. The only connection to reality is while you walk. Since, you have to move you have to occasionally watch your steps and that is "reality connect." The "ViewCart" is perhaps destroying one of the last resorts of such connections and taking you faster to the world of empty matrix of imagined products, your consumerist aspirations and your utopic happiness.


Yet, as Freudian analysis of dreams, the pursuit of consumption is an illusory solution to the real problems of social life. Hence, we buy a music CD, a book or a bottle of alcohol for some future leisure day and we believe in the future leisure for which we continue to toil. Now, when we would be buying things for an imagined future, the ViewCart will show us what more can we buy and should we buy and we ought to buy.


Therefore, next time you bump up to a ViewCart with attached screen remember Kaleidoscope and don't forget to look at the ground as you walk.

Kolkata converts: Kaleidoscope sleeps in a strange bed

Kaleidoscope cannot say that he sacrifices things for the city he likes. First, because kaleidoscope has never abandon anything to live for the city. Second, and more importantly, he never has something to abandon for the city. As a participant (Can he say? well make it clear, he resides about 15 km away from the heart of the city) he has stronger attachment with his city. "His city" means Kolkata in late 1990s and early 2000s.

The inevitable:

While, the market principles dominate Kaleidoscope's world's governance, some say the transformation is inevitable. The question is what is this transformation. Transformation which makes Kaleidoscope feel that he is sleeping in some strange bed.

Principal nodes:

With his dangerously biased eyes, Kaleidoscope finds several nodes speeding up the transformation. First, the software boom - eighty percent of Kaleidoscope's friends work in this sector. "A lot" is the most suitable adjective - they work (a lot), earn (a lot) and spend (a lot). Second, and ever-increasing - the not bengali businessmen - they earn a lot, they chew a lot and their sons and daughters spend a lot. Third, and finally the bengalis who invest so much of their brain in imitation. Therefore, they cannot earn as much as the first two, they try to spend as much as them, and they obviously chew a lot...!

Reflections:

Kaleidoscope finds both material and social/mental reflection of the inevitable.

The material part:

The material part represents monotony. Kaleidoscope finds worlds are becoming world.

Two shopping malls, the first one is from USA (http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/02/online-shopping-vs-driving-mall-greener.php) and second one is Kolkata's south city mall.

The social/mental part:

This segment represents increasing love and faith on brand-names, increasing calculability in every sphere from dot pen refill to relationships. Kaleidoscope finds increasing use of electronic gadgets, a displacement of privacy of body by privacy of the mobile phone!

Come on - sleep on

Kaleidoscope continues to live in this world with increasingly small and yet large number of available alternatives and tries to win over his self which finds this city as a strange bed to sleep on. However, he is also getting a reminder that this rapid transformation makes it easier for Kaleidoscope to grow old!