Me and malls will never mix

Jimmy Who? they said.

Jimmy Choo, I replied.

Guys know nothing. On a recent trip to India, my male friends were blank. Maybe they thought Jimmy Choo was a teen golfer, a laundromat tycoon. But their wives were impressed by my familiarity with the shoe called Choo. Of course, I know this only because of a grim day long ago when I did what I shouldn't have.

Spent a day at a mall with my wife, daughter, niece.

Bad idea. They wanted to window shop. Choo to Blahnik to Louboutin (I have a minor degree in shoes; it's incredible what you learn from Sex And The City).

One day, window shopping will be an Olympic sport, wherein the person who does the entire circuit in the slowest time wins. Many champs will come from Singapore. And my family.

I dislike malls. In Dubai, India, Melbourne, Singapore. Because when I go into one, I usually don't know if I am in Dubai, India, Melbourne, Singapore. They all look the same. Same polished floors, uninspired design, bright lights, shiny shops. It's like I'm trapped inside a giant, antiseptic, vending machine.

People like malls. But of course. They're clean, cool, convenient shopping shrines. All that choice in one place. Neatly laid out. And if you're lost in a Louis Vuitton fantasy, the crowds don't register.

Some people even rate malls: On ambience, air-conditioning, shop range, the quality of dumplings (Paragon wins). I just wonder, why are there so few benches in Singapore malls? At least that way, non-mall people can just stare at mall people. It's fun.

Mall people, here like everywhere, are an advanced species. They can see a 30cm 'Sale' sign from over 20m away, thread through human traffic faster than a fleeing pickpocket and snatch an item from a stranger with a steel smile that says: 'Try. Me. %$*&.'

The non-mall person is pathetic. He is me, the foot-dragging husband who practises his golf swing in the Chanel window, or the fellow holding the bags and contemplating euthanasia. Yes, yes, I know women who hate malls and men who live in them.

I don't like malls because I like the small shop. The stand-alone shops. The old markets. Dirty, smelly, spread out, so what? Convenience is nice; it's also the death of character. Character like the tin-tabled, rickety-stooled food courts where you can smell, taste, feel Singapore. One day, it will be gone, too.

I like small shops because they're dying, history fading. Small bookstores whose owners remember what you read. Shops of jumbled bales of cloth. Store shops where my mother would leave me as a boy, whose radio commentary you leaned in to hear, where you could run out of cash and the owner smiled 'next week'. Surely some of this existed in Singapore?

No one wants to build relationships any more. In a digital world, of minimal human contact, people like efficiency. I prefer conversation. In Melbourne, a Chinese couple ran the local shop. They knew 25 words of English, me four in Chinese. We got on fine.

In Singapore, I chatted with my local store owner. I know the waitresses in the nearby restaurant. They introduced me to the Nepalese chef, who grinned politely on hearing my terrible Nepalese: 'Kasto cha (How are you)?'

Language is never an issue, for smiles speak paragraphs and semaphoring is a human art. I want to know where waiters are from and how store owners started off. For me, this is interesting. It's also how I get to know Singapore.

But in malls, absent of any scent of history, this doesn't easily happen. Smiles can be as plastic as the flowers. Service is brusque. I feel like a walking wallet, not a person.

Then last week, in one of these marble tombs, at a shop called Mantra, the owner engaged me in conversation. She was friendly, delightful, chatty. We discovered our parents lived in the same town.

It was lovely, but an exception.

Truth is, me and malls will never mix. I'll always be a grouchy alien lost on this polished glass planet whose language will never be mine. After all, brand for many means Gucci and Armani, but for me, it will always be what cowboys did to cattle in Louis L'Amour westerns.

The writer, a senior correspondent with The Straits Times' Sports Desk, comes from India but has a home in Australia. He has been in Singapore for two years.

Source: Sunday Times, 17 Jan 2010.