Pulling the plug...

...on Chennai's most popular Mall, Spencer Plaza!

Even though the city is now coming up with more hip places to 'hang out', my personal favorite will always be Spencer Plaza; for the shear variety you find...from the ultra high-end speciality audio studios and fashion outlets to the tiny side stores in the aisles where you pick tees for a hundred rupees (not to mention Samosas and chai) and everything in between!

That's why I make it a point to go there every time I'm in Chennai. Other places like CitiCenter and all look really aloof with their extravagant architecture and terribly expensive fashion outlets with prices that rival their European counterparts...and I really wonder who actually shops there.

Which is why I was more than a little annoyed to find out that the government is stupidly cutting power supply to the mall everyday between 6 and 9pm everyday in order to meet demands. EVERYDAY!

Actually something like this has been apparently going on for quite a while now; ever since this summer when record power shortages forced offices to send employees home early, industries to cut back on production and households to forgo electricity for upto 8hrs a day. Of course, such "load shedding" is common in India during the peak summer months, but is usually limited to an hour's supply of domestic power with little or no impact on commercial establishments.

But when you have this trend falling through all the way into winter and having to force major retail chains to close their outlets at malls during the busiest hours on a weekend...you know there is something seriously wrong with the city.

I mean, stopping commercial establishments from doing business at the best time of the day is honestly the stupidest thing I can think of...with or without any power shortage. 
A friend of mine recently wrote this post on India being a developing country; but the way things are now, whatever is the reverse of development is what is going on right now.

I sincerely hope the guys sitting up there in Parliament haven't traded their brains for baloney sandwiches yet; but in case they have, I have news for them:
The rest of us down here are ashamed of you!

Government under-sight may have caused it, but cutting down on progress is not a solution or even a workaround. 
It is plain stupidity.

12 comments:

Rayees Ahamed said...

Cool Down :),

This year the situation is worse, Increasing industrialization, Change in life style, and the subsequent increase in power demand is not met by the present sources.

Most of us do not care to save energy in our premises office/college/home and also considerable portion of the power is theft at every level from a common man´s home to Industries. Polititions, Rowdis Gundas, Police and other officers , those who have power rob power.
In my view all the large scale industries, small scale clusters, Huge IT Hubs etc., should have their own Common Captive Power Plants. In Spencer i guess many shops have gen sets to rely on. Chennai doesn't wait for anyone , athu vera Katha , Things move somehow one way or the other.

Rayees Ahamed said...

Power cut panninaalum paruvalle, voltage fluctuation is wortest of the worstestest in tamilnadu. in my short stay of 20 days three devices namely home theatre, Modem and subwoofer went off due to heavy voltage fluctuation.

Anonymous said...

So Chennai is a great city, na? Hope you have a great time in Splenzer!

I didn't see this post on 7th Nov, has my browser a problem?

-Saurabh-

Rakesh Vanamali said...

" I sincerely hope the guys sitting up there in Parliament haven't traded their brains for baloney sandwiches yet"

What on earth do you mean?

Do they have brains in the first place, let alone trading them? ;)

Good post! A reflection of a billion voices!

Cheers

Rakesh

-=A.R.N.=- said...

@rayees
"cool down"? Bro, my favorite mall's in the dark here!
:)

Actually lots of stores have generators and that's a bigger problem because it causes more pollution than the regular electricity.
But of course, the idiots in our government will probably need another 10years to figure that out.

Besides, power demands don't simply go up just like that in 6months...this has been going on for over years now.
But the officials were probably too busy counting their money to see the change.


@Saurabh
Chennai's a great city dude...you shld come down here sometime!
And abt the post; yeah I've noticed it too...blogger's internal RSS feed seems to need more time to update the links somehow,


@Rakesh,
Welcome to Random Thoughts dude!
And thx for the comments...hmmm, just curious: Do we know each other?
I once knew a Rakesh once.

Anonymous said...

I know.. I had been there yesterday.. Was the weather pleasant when you were here? Usually it is cooler inside Spencer Plaza, yesterday it was the opposite. :( Too bad..

A wo(a)ndering mind said...

3 hours EVERYDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! are you serious! this is complete atrocity man!
I am glad you spoke about it. I read somewhere about what a big deal it was that people in china were given orders as to when they should leave their house to go to work during the olympics time.. and what an inconvenience it was and so on.. Oh now I think.. if anyone is qualified enough to talk about inconvinience then it is the urban Indians..

-=A.R.N.=- said...

@Faiza
Fortunately yes...the weather was a beautiful warm (not hot) sunny day.
That's one thing I miss here; forecast's saying gray skies for the next three months
:(


@a wondering mind
Yes, 3hrs for Spencer's because it's a commercial place. Households in chennai usually have it 4hrs or more.
Smaller towns fare even worse.

I'd love to see the look on your face when you get there on your next vacation...heh heh.
:D

Unknown said...

Real sorry state dude... It's even more sad in the outskirts...The place where i stay, we had like 6 hours of power cut everyday. Things have got a bit better now; its only 3 hours now :(
And i was just speaking to my friend in Kerala and he was telling me the Small business people there are forced to shut down their business coz of the serious power constraints. This is one problem which needs immediate attention.
And the most disgusting thing is the amount of power we waste as transmission losses; high time we did something about this.

Rayees Ahamed said...

Arcot Veerasamy's designation should be changed from 'min thurai amaichar' to 'min vettu thurai amaichar' ... I guess he is busy in his land corruptions

m said...

So u like Spencer's....i did not since too people there trying to block ur way and forcing to make u buy something!

Anyway...very much belated b'day wishes...

-=A.R.N.=- said...

@issam
Interesting what you mentioned abt transmission losses; guess that's one area where we can take some immediate action...if someone tries that is.

@rayees
:)

@ela
Na, I never had anyone block my way and force anything on me at Spencer's. But then, it could be that I'm used to the crowds of T-Nagar.
And thx for the wishes.
:)