I was sifting through the morning newspapers when a box item made me sit up. The last few days of the outgoing year, it said, had seen the booking of the highest number of BMW and Mercedes cars in the country in Chandigarh. Wow, said a wicked part of my mind, this is truly the icing on the cake. Congratulations, my beloved city, here is the ultimate certificate — if you ever needed one — of your having arrived in style. Also, this could be the ultimate certificate — in case you don’t realise it — of your descent into complete decadence.

No, I have nothing against BMWs and Mercedes, per se. I am told they are very good cars. They are powerful, sophisticated machines and very, very comfortable to ride in. But that is not the point. The real point is that they are exorbitantly and obscenely expensive, and that is almost certainly the reason they had been bought. They were meant to be flaunted. They were their owners’ pride, but much more than that, they had to be the objects of neighbours’ envy.

It is true, of course, that every society and every city has those who wish to be exclusive. Chandigarh, however, is disproportionately full of them, considering that it is a small town by all measures and has a population of barely a million. Chandigarh seems to thrive on the vanity of such people. It is not just swanky cars they buy. Chandigarh already has the highest per capita number of exclusive outlets of designer labels in clothes and shoes and bags. More such outlets open every week.

... contd.