In its last issue, the newsmagazine The Week, carried an extended desi travelogue: an account of ‘‘ten fun cities for the traveling male.’’ It does seem odd for a magazine to focus solely on the male traveler when there is a surge in women traveling for work. You see them everywhere, on long distance buses, at airports, in hotels, lugging files and overnight cases. Nevertheless, despite the lapse, the feature does offer some insights into emerging India. Ten fun cities! Could one think of even four ‘‘fun’’ cities in India a few years ago? The heading itself is revealing of how much the country has changed. Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Kochi, Chennai, Goa (a bit large by city standards but nevertheless), Kolkata and Pune are the lucky ones to make it to the magazine’s list. Ahmedabad is conspicuous by its absence, though given the prominence awarded to liquor — or at least the public consumption of it — in the descriptions of ‘‘fun’’, one can conceive of at least one good reason for its exclusion.The selection has the highest number of cities from the south followed by the west, then the north and the east bringing up the rear with only one and is fairly indicative of the pattern of urbanisation. In the coming years one could think of adding, possibly, Indore, Baroda, Amritsar, Lucknow, Mysore, Coimbatore, Jaipur and Thiruvananthapuram. It’s been some time since I’ve been to Allahabad, Madurai and Bhopal, but something tells me it might be a while before they catch up. And then there are the towns around tourist resorts buzzing with roadside boutiques, internet cafes and health food stalls that could soon develop into centers for the alternative life. But the immediate boom is in the satellite cities. Gurgaon, bordering Delhi, for instance, offers a peek into the future that bears an uncanny resemblance to scenarios dreamed up by the makers of films like The Matrix and Bladerunner: buildings that pop up by the way side like abandoned space ships, colonies that call themselves cities, omnipresent security guards, the hushed chattering of the shopping malls, the late night brightness of the call centers. And yet, there is a feel of anywhereness about it that has more in common with American road movies. A make-believe town adrift on the highway with people in it, getting about the business of daily living, but just about, their briefcases and suitcases packed for the long road and the real city elsewhere.In time, of course, Gurgaon and others like it will all become largely self sufficient units connected in various ways to the parent city but needing it less and less. At the moment, though, it offers a good example of how coolness comes about. In India it is almost always through western- isation. In Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist the hero (played by William Hurt in the eponymous movie) is a travel writer who writes guidebooks for people who never want to leave home. One gets a similar feeling reading in the Week’s series about the similar sounding pubs, discotheques, malls and cafes that have sprouted up in every city except that these elements of commonality here are seen as glamorous rather than dowdy as they appear in Tyler’s book. Interestingly the articles in the magazine also describe each city’s special attractions, historical and otherwise, in some detail. But one cannot help the feeling though that it is the sudden emergence of one that has led to a renewed appreciation of the other. In Mumbai something similar is happening. The spread of the multiplex and the shopping mall challenged the hold south Mumbai long had on the coolness barometer, but now the city shows signs of breaking up, not necessarily into chunks but more into localities each with its very own distinctive character — a bit like Hong Kong providing options for a choice of lifestyles. Most parts of the city have their own websites and this month the suburb of Bandra plans a fortnight long festival to showcase the neighbourhood’s unique characteristics, a trend that will probably spread to other areas.Urban India is clearly on the verge of an explosion. Not just in terms of economic growth but also in terms of attitudes, lifestyles and mores. And one of the significant developments is that of a new breed of Indians that is young, not necessarily rich but certainly more sophisticated and demanding than before in its need for ‘‘fun’’. It is also a breed that can travel freely from Delhi to Kochi, for instance, or Kolkota to Pune, bringing with it a cosmopolitanism that was so rare earlier.
