10-27-2003, 01:22 AM
I didn't know where to post this? here or on the economy thread, to laugh at it or simply <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' />
Anyway, u decide:
New World Of Guppies
Meet the globally mobile citizens of Gurgaon, the newest subspecies of the yuppies, who are creating a city within a city in a maze of malls, multinationals and Manhattan mores
By Kanika Gahlaut
South of south Delhi is defying all definitions. Time magazine declares it to be the symbol of New India and its young Big Spenders; its glass-and-chrome-dazzle offices inhabited by MNCs have economy watchers likening its hub to that of Silicon Valley in its pubescent energy; architects are brandishing its "walk-to-work culture" and its soaring, snot-green buildings as a "mini Singapore" of organised development.
"I feel I am stopping over in Zurich. You don't think you are in India."
Sona Kaur Airhostess with a Swiss airline, with her cousin
"Seventeen couples moved here after me, inspired by our quality of life."
Sumer Dutta CEO, Hewlett-Packard, playing golf with friends
For urban anthropologists, it is a curious example of cowdung capitalism. Buffalo and Benz share road space here. The Haryanvi and the high-rise cohabit. Both the Jat and the jet setter are marvelling at their luck. Who would have thought that a fringe town in O.P. Chautala's rustic Haryana, its closest claim to modernity till a decade ago host to the humble Maruti Suzuki offices, would be regarded as urban utopia?
In the seven years since Gurgaon saw its first skyscraper, high-rise buildings have gone up to 99, overtaking Delhi at 76, though its population is minuscule in comparison-barely two lakh to Delhi's one crore. Its globe-trotting residents compare it to foreign locations. "Sitting in the City Centre Mall is like being in Zurich," mutters Sona Kaur approvingly as she sips vanilla-flavoured cappuccino at the glassy mall, with 150 shops and seven movie screens. An airhostess with a Swiss airline, she shifted from Delhi to Sushant Lok in order to be close to the airport. Once a footnote in the Mahabharat-legend has it that Guru Dronacharya taught archery to the five Pandavas here-Gurgaon is now compared to Manhattan. There are as many types of people as there are reasons to move here. from the frequent traveller subspecies that resides in the snootily premium Laburnum building to the globally aspiring residents of its thousands of 20-something call-centre "chowkidar shift" employees. But when they cross over to the other side of the Ship Building-the blue-green monstrosity that indicates where Delhi ends and Gurgaon begins-irrespective of income bracket and social standing, they become the Guppies.
THE GUPPY'S EVOLUTION
YUPPIES: Young upwardly mobile professionals in urban America in the 1980s who valued all things material. Their lifestyle led to the term "rat race".
PUPPIES: Not a professional-he "inherited dad's business"-he, with his decked-up Maruti and taste for Scotch, Punjabified the American dream. A Yuppy gone wonky.
GUPPIES: Gurgaon's upwardly mobile professional, with his global pursuits and snazzy local lifestyle, has made suburbia swing.
After the Yuppies of the 1980s and their Indian counterparts, the Puppies of the early 1990s, this is the latest subspecies of the upwardly mobile. The executive who works out from DLF Square Tower, "the highest building in Gurgaon at 90 m and 22 floors", as he will tell you, is one of them. As is the suburban siren, an English instructor at GE who shops at one of the twin towers of pleasure, the Metropolitan Mall or DT Malls. (In deference to the Guppies' needs, the malls close at 9.30 p.m., unheard of anywhere in the country, and Guppykids can be left in the mall crèche). Then there is the Ship Worshipper, the paan-chewing property dealer next door who has made his office into a mini-replica of the Gateway Tower or the Ship Building, "because people are more ready to do business if your office has an international look". On the map Gurgaon is a dot in Haryana, but the Guppy will marvel about how "this could be anywhere."
GUPPY'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
The Guppies come in various varieties, each with their own hang-ups and compulsions regarding suburban life
AMERICAN GUPPY
At night they work for America, by day they are American. The call-centre crowd earning Rs 8,000-Rs 14,000 a month, aged 18-25 years, are the pseudo yankees. They hail from towns such as Lucknow and Patna. Gurgaon is as close to their dream land, America, as they will get. They visit pubs over the weekend, watch American films at the multiplex and discover "American" relationships-live-in liaisons that have come as a culture shock to the residents of sectors 14 and 17, who rent out their barsatis to them.
NIRVANA SEEKER
If you live in Gurgaon, you do yoga. Says Usha Chengappa, yoga teacher at the uppity Golf Club and the less uppity South City Club: "Suburban lifestyle lends itself to yoga, with its pretty clubs, close at hand, and the ambience." The Nirvana Seekers need to drive home the point that their lifestyle is healthier than that of city dwellers. Being asana-aspirational gives you a leg up on the lifestyle ladder.
HOUSEWIFE ON THE HONEY HUNT
Her idea of bliss is finding a jar of Australian honey. Her husband's decision to leave Delhi and her kitty party friends was justified when she realised that besides broccoli and kadoo, the Supermart also delivers the rare jar of Australian honey. What's more, the order can be placed on phone. Since there is little by means of public transport-autorickshaws do not exist and Haryana Roadways is nuisance rather than conveyance in the Guppie scheme of things-her dependence on the phone, and on direct marketing ventures such as Amways, is high.
THE MALL-HOPPER
For the Gurgaon denizen, Metropolitan and Lifestyle represent victory over his Delhi counterpart. "The self-esteem of the resident of Gurgaon has risen in direct proportion to the occupancy in the malls," observes Nitin Bhayana, owner of Interiors Espania in Udyog Vihar. Since their advent, the Guppy housewife has dumped her Delhi friends, with whom she earlier did the South Ex, GK rounds and now only hangs out with new friends in Gurgaon. But what really gets snob-quotient going up as high as the skyscrapers is that Delhiites-the same species that once raised their eyebrows and said "Gurgaawan?!" in an accent when the Guppy gave out his address-now make their way here for shopping or movie-watching or even dinner at the American-styled The Fox, where crooners in micros belt out tunes while you lounge at the bar.
If his predecessor, the Puppy, was the Punjabi who thought he was American, the Guppy is the Global Citizen living in Gurgaon. The word global pops up almost like a badge-from the Global Business Park to the Global Pathways World School (which offers personal PCs to its students). An advertisement during the interval at the PVR cinema in the Metropolitan Mall sums it up best. Local flats are sold in "global" packages: "Italian tiles!", proclaims the accented voice, showing clips of yet more condominiums representing self-sufficient apartment living, "English upholstery! American bathroom fittings!" There is a city within this city for everyone, a piece of London or Malibu, New York or Singapore. When Chautala's promised casino comes here, they will have a piece of Las Vegas.
Delhi is no longer the Big Brother next door, but the fuddy-duddy distant uncle. The Guppy takes pride in his Manhattan mores. "Unlike in Delhi, where privilege is associated with the old-boy network, Gurgaon offers corporate facilities that are not hereditary," says Hardeep Singh, CEO, Cargill, who shifted his office from Chanakyapuri, forcing a majority of his employees to move residence as well. And while Singh himself may be teeing off at the Golf Course-which has a 1,500 membership costing Rs 9.5 lakh for 10 years, not within the reach of most of his employees-he sees no irony in that. "The basic luxuries of a good life are there," he says. "Shopping, eateries and club options, for corporates at all levels."
While there is no doubt that DLF built this model city, there is some dispute over who is making it rock. So if the NRIs who live in Garden Estate or the pilot families in Heritage Apartments bring to Gurgaon yet more global-while-living-in-India authenticity, the suburban CEO who left south Delhi in favour of a Rs 1 crore villa or a split-level penthouse in Gurgaon, will have you believe he created this urban haven. His power lies in his ability to move his employees' cheese. Forty and above, this breed is security obsessed (constantly talks about his "fully wired home"). His mode of transport is nothing less than a Lancer-there is a Maruti in the garage too, but that's for the maid to pick up fresh sabzi from the supermart. He restricts himself to get-togethers in other "fully wired" homes and will not be seen at Mojo, where he could find himself rubbing shoulders with junior executives-unless of course he hires the whole place for his party. The centre of socialising remains the Arnold Palmer-designed uppity Golf Club. The exclusivity-obsessed exec networks here, while wife, a spaghetti-top wearing suburban siren, swims at the Golf Course's Lagoon Pool or works out in the club's gym on equipment that come with TV monitors. Their children learn expensive hobbies like squash in glass back courts and riding (never to be called the more plebeian ''horse riding"). "The non-member does not exist for us," says Akash Ohri, pr manager in costly casual-gear and keds, with a snobbish air acquired during years of corporate schmoozing.
Sumer Dutta, ceo of Hewlett Packard, first mobilised his office, ordering it to shift to Gurgaon. Then he mobilised his social circuit. "When I sold my home in Greater Kailash four years ago, 17 couples followed me, inspired by our quality of life," he shrugs. "Qualify of life" for the CEOs of suburbia includes "chirping of birds", fauna following and "time saving". Datta's route between Unitech's Greenwood City, his private villa, and DLF Corporate Park, his office, takes five minutes (this includes dropping the Guppykid at Sri Ram, the school next door). He travels often-US for the weekend, Mumbai for a presentation-and the airport is close by. He last visited Delhi four months ago to attend a birthday party.
If the suburban CEO stakes claim to mobilising the exodus to Guppyville and the original inhabitant of Gurgaon, with his brand of jiski lathi uski bhains (whoever wields the stick owns the buffalo) philosophy, believes that because he lived here first he presides over it, it is the Suburban Swinger, the younger corporate, who believes that with the sheer numbers of his breed and his lifestyle he defines it.
The Suburban Swinger talks about his neighbour, the senior executive at J.W. Thompson, but is as likely to drop the names of buildings-"the one opposite Belvedere Towers". He points out the Golf Course, haloed in yellow at night and visible from any high-rise in Gurgaon, to visitors. Though he cannot avail of the facilities of this final symbol of Guppydom arrival, glory can be derived from association. Though the high-end apartments within the Golf Course are beyond his means, the more budget-friendly pads overlooking the complex is the property that he covets.
The Suburban Swinger is pad-proud. Between Windsor Place and Beverly Park, Richmond and Hamilton House and Regency Park, a cluster of DLF buildings, the sibling rivalry is ripe. They share their Community Centre-where Amaan and Aayan Ali Bangash and Mallika Sarabhai perform-but Richmond and Hamilton, costing about Rs 55 lakh, consider themselves more premium than Regency Park (costing about Rs 44 lakh). They have a pool, a gym and laundry facilities in the basement. Regency Park, boasting a 24 acre complex, considers its bonuses no less. The rwas battle it out over alleged crossovers into spaces, with dogs, maids and vegetable sellers included in this fight. The Guppy leans towards a Punjabification of apartment living. Never a dull moment for anyone, including the Dalmatian. Delhi no longer pops up in conversations. Having sold his home in west Delhi to move here, the Swinger enjoys his new symbols of Guppydom. And though some need to drive to Nehru Place for work (unlike the CEO, not all can order the company home), they are apologetic about this, complaining about the traffic "in town".
As DLF, Unitech, Ansal and other private builders clamber to meet the dreams of the suburbia seekers "at all levels", new malls go under construction and top-of-the-line gyms muscle for space. So do eating places, from the ubiquitous south Indian to high-end Thai and chains such as Chor Bizarre. Little wonder then that Mr and Mrs Suburban Swinger, who live in Heritage building, sandwiched between the three malls, have not cooked at home for the past two months. This is also turning into take-away town: of the 21 outlets of Dominos, the Gurgaon outlet, along with Saket, has come up as most profitable with 205 orders placed daily. Watering holes (11 at the last count) open every week, high-rises with full power back-ups, intercoms and security systems spring up on erstwhile cattle grazing land.
Cultural centres are being dreamed up. As Guppyworld's only eyesore, the roads, undergo maintenance, the Guppy's tolerance of those outside his orbit-those on The Other Side of the potholed MG Road or the truck-infested NH1-wears thin. Guppyville, pronounced "Gurgawan" before its glorification, promises to become so insulated in its globality that you almost expect someone demanding to see your visa at the border.
[url="http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20031103/society_lifestyle.shtml&SET=T"]http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20031103/...yle.shtml&SET=T[/url]
Anyway, u decide:
New World Of Guppies
Meet the globally mobile citizens of Gurgaon, the newest subspecies of the yuppies, who are creating a city within a city in a maze of malls, multinationals and Manhattan mores
By Kanika Gahlaut
South of south Delhi is defying all definitions. Time magazine declares it to be the symbol of New India and its young Big Spenders; its glass-and-chrome-dazzle offices inhabited by MNCs have economy watchers likening its hub to that of Silicon Valley in its pubescent energy; architects are brandishing its "walk-to-work culture" and its soaring, snot-green buildings as a "mini Singapore" of organised development.
"I feel I am stopping over in Zurich. You don't think you are in India."
Sona Kaur Airhostess with a Swiss airline, with her cousin
"Seventeen couples moved here after me, inspired by our quality of life."
Sumer Dutta CEO, Hewlett-Packard, playing golf with friends
For urban anthropologists, it is a curious example of cowdung capitalism. Buffalo and Benz share road space here. The Haryanvi and the high-rise cohabit. Both the Jat and the jet setter are marvelling at their luck. Who would have thought that a fringe town in O.P. Chautala's rustic Haryana, its closest claim to modernity till a decade ago host to the humble Maruti Suzuki offices, would be regarded as urban utopia?
In the seven years since Gurgaon saw its first skyscraper, high-rise buildings have gone up to 99, overtaking Delhi at 76, though its population is minuscule in comparison-barely two lakh to Delhi's one crore. Its globe-trotting residents compare it to foreign locations. "Sitting in the City Centre Mall is like being in Zurich," mutters Sona Kaur approvingly as she sips vanilla-flavoured cappuccino at the glassy mall, with 150 shops and seven movie screens. An airhostess with a Swiss airline, she shifted from Delhi to Sushant Lok in order to be close to the airport. Once a footnote in the Mahabharat-legend has it that Guru Dronacharya taught archery to the five Pandavas here-Gurgaon is now compared to Manhattan. There are as many types of people as there are reasons to move here. from the frequent traveller subspecies that resides in the snootily premium Laburnum building to the globally aspiring residents of its thousands of 20-something call-centre "chowkidar shift" employees. But when they cross over to the other side of the Ship Building-the blue-green monstrosity that indicates where Delhi ends and Gurgaon begins-irrespective of income bracket and social standing, they become the Guppies.
THE GUPPY'S EVOLUTION
YUPPIES: Young upwardly mobile professionals in urban America in the 1980s who valued all things material. Their lifestyle led to the term "rat race".
PUPPIES: Not a professional-he "inherited dad's business"-he, with his decked-up Maruti and taste for Scotch, Punjabified the American dream. A Yuppy gone wonky.
GUPPIES: Gurgaon's upwardly mobile professional, with his global pursuits and snazzy local lifestyle, has made suburbia swing.
After the Yuppies of the 1980s and their Indian counterparts, the Puppies of the early 1990s, this is the latest subspecies of the upwardly mobile. The executive who works out from DLF Square Tower, "the highest building in Gurgaon at 90 m and 22 floors", as he will tell you, is one of them. As is the suburban siren, an English instructor at GE who shops at one of the twin towers of pleasure, the Metropolitan Mall or DT Malls. (In deference to the Guppies' needs, the malls close at 9.30 p.m., unheard of anywhere in the country, and Guppykids can be left in the mall crèche). Then there is the Ship Worshipper, the paan-chewing property dealer next door who has made his office into a mini-replica of the Gateway Tower or the Ship Building, "because people are more ready to do business if your office has an international look". On the map Gurgaon is a dot in Haryana, but the Guppy will marvel about how "this could be anywhere."
GUPPY'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
The Guppies come in various varieties, each with their own hang-ups and compulsions regarding suburban life
AMERICAN GUPPY
At night they work for America, by day they are American. The call-centre crowd earning Rs 8,000-Rs 14,000 a month, aged 18-25 years, are the pseudo yankees. They hail from towns such as Lucknow and Patna. Gurgaon is as close to their dream land, America, as they will get. They visit pubs over the weekend, watch American films at the multiplex and discover "American" relationships-live-in liaisons that have come as a culture shock to the residents of sectors 14 and 17, who rent out their barsatis to them.
NIRVANA SEEKER
If you live in Gurgaon, you do yoga. Says Usha Chengappa, yoga teacher at the uppity Golf Club and the less uppity South City Club: "Suburban lifestyle lends itself to yoga, with its pretty clubs, close at hand, and the ambience." The Nirvana Seekers need to drive home the point that their lifestyle is healthier than that of city dwellers. Being asana-aspirational gives you a leg up on the lifestyle ladder.
HOUSEWIFE ON THE HONEY HUNT
Her idea of bliss is finding a jar of Australian honey. Her husband's decision to leave Delhi and her kitty party friends was justified when she realised that besides broccoli and kadoo, the Supermart also delivers the rare jar of Australian honey. What's more, the order can be placed on phone. Since there is little by means of public transport-autorickshaws do not exist and Haryana Roadways is nuisance rather than conveyance in the Guppie scheme of things-her dependence on the phone, and on direct marketing ventures such as Amways, is high.
THE MALL-HOPPER
For the Gurgaon denizen, Metropolitan and Lifestyle represent victory over his Delhi counterpart. "The self-esteem of the resident of Gurgaon has risen in direct proportion to the occupancy in the malls," observes Nitin Bhayana, owner of Interiors Espania in Udyog Vihar. Since their advent, the Guppy housewife has dumped her Delhi friends, with whom she earlier did the South Ex, GK rounds and now only hangs out with new friends in Gurgaon. But what really gets snob-quotient going up as high as the skyscrapers is that Delhiites-the same species that once raised their eyebrows and said "Gurgaawan?!" in an accent when the Guppy gave out his address-now make their way here for shopping or movie-watching or even dinner at the American-styled The Fox, where crooners in micros belt out tunes while you lounge at the bar.
If his predecessor, the Puppy, was the Punjabi who thought he was American, the Guppy is the Global Citizen living in Gurgaon. The word global pops up almost like a badge-from the Global Business Park to the Global Pathways World School (which offers personal PCs to its students). An advertisement during the interval at the PVR cinema in the Metropolitan Mall sums it up best. Local flats are sold in "global" packages: "Italian tiles!", proclaims the accented voice, showing clips of yet more condominiums representing self-sufficient apartment living, "English upholstery! American bathroom fittings!" There is a city within this city for everyone, a piece of London or Malibu, New York or Singapore. When Chautala's promised casino comes here, they will have a piece of Las Vegas.
Delhi is no longer the Big Brother next door, but the fuddy-duddy distant uncle. The Guppy takes pride in his Manhattan mores. "Unlike in Delhi, where privilege is associated with the old-boy network, Gurgaon offers corporate facilities that are not hereditary," says Hardeep Singh, CEO, Cargill, who shifted his office from Chanakyapuri, forcing a majority of his employees to move residence as well. And while Singh himself may be teeing off at the Golf Course-which has a 1,500 membership costing Rs 9.5 lakh for 10 years, not within the reach of most of his employees-he sees no irony in that. "The basic luxuries of a good life are there," he says. "Shopping, eateries and club options, for corporates at all levels."
While there is no doubt that DLF built this model city, there is some dispute over who is making it rock. So if the NRIs who live in Garden Estate or the pilot families in Heritage Apartments bring to Gurgaon yet more global-while-living-in-India authenticity, the suburban CEO who left south Delhi in favour of a Rs 1 crore villa or a split-level penthouse in Gurgaon, will have you believe he created this urban haven. His power lies in his ability to move his employees' cheese. Forty and above, this breed is security obsessed (constantly talks about his "fully wired home"). His mode of transport is nothing less than a Lancer-there is a Maruti in the garage too, but that's for the maid to pick up fresh sabzi from the supermart. He restricts himself to get-togethers in other "fully wired" homes and will not be seen at Mojo, where he could find himself rubbing shoulders with junior executives-unless of course he hires the whole place for his party. The centre of socialising remains the Arnold Palmer-designed uppity Golf Club. The exclusivity-obsessed exec networks here, while wife, a spaghetti-top wearing suburban siren, swims at the Golf Course's Lagoon Pool or works out in the club's gym on equipment that come with TV monitors. Their children learn expensive hobbies like squash in glass back courts and riding (never to be called the more plebeian ''horse riding"). "The non-member does not exist for us," says Akash Ohri, pr manager in costly casual-gear and keds, with a snobbish air acquired during years of corporate schmoozing.
Sumer Dutta, ceo of Hewlett Packard, first mobilised his office, ordering it to shift to Gurgaon. Then he mobilised his social circuit. "When I sold my home in Greater Kailash four years ago, 17 couples followed me, inspired by our quality of life," he shrugs. "Qualify of life" for the CEOs of suburbia includes "chirping of birds", fauna following and "time saving". Datta's route between Unitech's Greenwood City, his private villa, and DLF Corporate Park, his office, takes five minutes (this includes dropping the Guppykid at Sri Ram, the school next door). He travels often-US for the weekend, Mumbai for a presentation-and the airport is close by. He last visited Delhi four months ago to attend a birthday party.
If the suburban CEO stakes claim to mobilising the exodus to Guppyville and the original inhabitant of Gurgaon, with his brand of jiski lathi uski bhains (whoever wields the stick owns the buffalo) philosophy, believes that because he lived here first he presides over it, it is the Suburban Swinger, the younger corporate, who believes that with the sheer numbers of his breed and his lifestyle he defines it.
The Suburban Swinger talks about his neighbour, the senior executive at J.W. Thompson, but is as likely to drop the names of buildings-"the one opposite Belvedere Towers". He points out the Golf Course, haloed in yellow at night and visible from any high-rise in Gurgaon, to visitors. Though he cannot avail of the facilities of this final symbol of Guppydom arrival, glory can be derived from association. Though the high-end apartments within the Golf Course are beyond his means, the more budget-friendly pads overlooking the complex is the property that he covets.
The Suburban Swinger is pad-proud. Between Windsor Place and Beverly Park, Richmond and Hamilton House and Regency Park, a cluster of DLF buildings, the sibling rivalry is ripe. They share their Community Centre-where Amaan and Aayan Ali Bangash and Mallika Sarabhai perform-but Richmond and Hamilton, costing about Rs 55 lakh, consider themselves more premium than Regency Park (costing about Rs 44 lakh). They have a pool, a gym and laundry facilities in the basement. Regency Park, boasting a 24 acre complex, considers its bonuses no less. The rwas battle it out over alleged crossovers into spaces, with dogs, maids and vegetable sellers included in this fight. The Guppy leans towards a Punjabification of apartment living. Never a dull moment for anyone, including the Dalmatian. Delhi no longer pops up in conversations. Having sold his home in west Delhi to move here, the Swinger enjoys his new symbols of Guppydom. And though some need to drive to Nehru Place for work (unlike the CEO, not all can order the company home), they are apologetic about this, complaining about the traffic "in town".
As DLF, Unitech, Ansal and other private builders clamber to meet the dreams of the suburbia seekers "at all levels", new malls go under construction and top-of-the-line gyms muscle for space. So do eating places, from the ubiquitous south Indian to high-end Thai and chains such as Chor Bizarre. Little wonder then that Mr and Mrs Suburban Swinger, who live in Heritage building, sandwiched between the three malls, have not cooked at home for the past two months. This is also turning into take-away town: of the 21 outlets of Dominos, the Gurgaon outlet, along with Saket, has come up as most profitable with 205 orders placed daily. Watering holes (11 at the last count) open every week, high-rises with full power back-ups, intercoms and security systems spring up on erstwhile cattle grazing land.
Cultural centres are being dreamed up. As Guppyworld's only eyesore, the roads, undergo maintenance, the Guppy's tolerance of those outside his orbit-those on The Other Side of the potholed MG Road or the truck-infested NH1-wears thin. Guppyville, pronounced "Gurgawan" before its glorification, promises to become so insulated in its globality that you almost expect someone demanding to see your visa at the border.
[url="http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20031103/society_lifestyle.shtml&SET=T"]http://www.indiatoday.com/itoday/20031103/...yle.shtml&SET=T[/url]