[Reader-list] Safe and Save!

[Zainab Bawa]

8 October 2004
Safe and Save Mall

This evening, I went to a shopping mall which is situated right behind New 
Market. It is called Safe and Save. Yeah, I know the name sounds funny, but 
I have noticed that even in a city like Srinagar, shops tend to have these 
funny little names. Safe and Save is a new mall. As you enter, you are 
confronted with about six little television screens which monitor movements 
of customers, what I call ‘shop lifting detection machines’.

Safe and Save is two storeyed. The ground floor consists mainly of food and 
household items including meat, vegetables, fruits, washing powders, 
toiletries, and a plethora of such things which a housewife tends to be 
obsessed with. The top floor or first floor if you may please consists of 
garments department, leather accessories and shoes department, and perfumes, 
etc. Basically, it is a complete mall which means everything is available 
under one roof (and in two floors).

Today being a Friday (Bangladesh has weekly holiday on Friday as per the 
convention followed in Islamic countries), there is an unusual rush of 
people shopping all over. On the ground floor, there are various offers and 
freebies on display – ‘purchase two and get one free’, ‘buy goods worth so 
much and get this gift’, ‘lucky draw’, ‘prices of some items below the 
marked price’, etc. Of course, VAT is the norm here in case of shopping 
malls here.

Couple of interesting things I observed around here. Firstly, several burkha 
clad women were seen around with their families in the shopping mall. I 
perceived that these burkha clad women belonged to the upper economic strata 
of Bangladeshi society. The mall is an important source of outing for them. 
Is it their breathing place? I dunno! I also noticed that not so well-to-do 
families were also around here, trying to purchase some household items. It 
seems like the malls are a novelty in the lives of the people here.

Before getting to the mall, I was discussing with a friend about how when I 
was in this city last year, people would often tell me that Dhaka is more 
fun than living in Khulna. “That’s because”, he said, “there are hardly any 
artificial avenues for entertainment here unlike in Dhaka. Besides, there is 
no place to go for an outing. If you take the example of Srinagar, the 
moment you step out of the house, it is outing – you have the mountains, the 
Dal Lake, and what have you. In Srinagar, you do not need artificial avenues 
of entertainment. Here, people want an outlet – they want to go somewhere!” 
So, the shopping mall seems to give them an entry into the global market of 
goods and products. My friend’s words gave me a flash of insight – the 
seafront in Mumbai city is actually an important avenue for outing and 
recreation. Here’s a place where you do not have to pay to hang around. You 
simply have a good time here! In Delhi city, such avenues are sparse. The 
only crowded place that I have seen, especially at nights, is the India Gate 
where people laze around and chat with friends and family.

Safe and Save has an interesting design concept – it is a bold experiment in 
terms of composition and building. That is an interesting part about 
architecture in Bangladesh. Further, architects are able to exactly recreate 
international models of commercial buildings here – apparently, their sense 
of composition of space is better here, as an architect practicing here 
tells me!

As the tea shop, the mall also gives me food to think about the very notions 
of ‘public’ and ‘private’ in a city and the concept of space. Don’t have 
much to say for the time being, but hopefully, we shall return back to this 
concept very soon.

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