Things That Bang

If you live in or anywhere near Koramangala in Bangalore, then the mushrooming of various grocery stores and malls must have given you plenty of choice and taken away many reasons to venture into the city. 

There are plenty to choose from and most are placed at convenient spots. However there are differences in all these malls that effect the shopping experience and should be taken into account.

The Oasis Mall: The Oasis Mall on the Inner Ring Road may look spectacular from outside but there are glitches that are irksome. The parking structure has sharp turns. Before turning into any level one has to reverse, take a smaller angle and then turn. The parking is a nightmare, requiring personal floor attendants to help the cars to pull out. Obviously the owners of the mall are well aware of the problem since each floor has at least six people to help cars pull out.

The hyper grocery store, Spar, has one tiny little elevator to take the trolley and family back to the right parking level. Those who don't want to wait for the elevator find themselves walking down the parking ramp with cars honking behind them.

It is unsafe and even though the hypermarket provides employees to take the stuff to the car but hey, best keep your fingers crossed that the car honking behind you and that heavy cart of yours have good brakes.

Most people who revisit the store generally park right at the Hypermarket level to avoid this inconvenience. 

Above the hypermarket, there is an area for kids to play in and the food court. Prices are reasonable and most families have a good time there.

Below Spar, there is Lifestyle, the upmarket departmental store. Its a tinier version of the original one near the Stadium. It is a pleasure to be there, as usual, without bumping into people. Suffice to say its an upper class mall where you won't get the crowd you might see at the Garuda Mall.

Total Mall- There are two Total Malls near Koramangala. One is at Madiwala and the other is on Sarjapur Road. The grocery section of Total is good, the meat section awesome - fresh meat, fish and hygienic presentation. The butchers in the Madiwala Post Total are perfectionists. They also have an impressive liquor section, with a variety of local and imported wines, whiskeys, and beers.

Total Mall's clothes and toy sections are dirt cheap and very Wal-mart in their appearance. I generally buy sarees and salwars for the 'help' from Total.

There are a few other independent stores in both the malls. The Madiwala Total also has a McDonald's, their food court is awesome with a wide selection of food- ranging from Thai, continental, Indian, Chinese etc.

The Total Mall on Sarjapur Road is similar to the other, but it also sells Aquariums and live Fish. I, however, won't recommend buying Live Fish from that Mall since the public is known to net them, knock on the glass and the employee responsible for that section is too scared to tell people to look but not touch. His knowledge of tropical and cold water fish is zilch. Its best to buy fish from proper Aquarium shops, like Gulmarg in Koramangala or Wet Pets on Infantry Road.

Star: Star is a Tata venture and very similar to Total Mall except it has more variety in terms of grocery. Apart from regular dog food, they stock Whiskas that my cats love. One gets Vanilla Coke over there and unlike Total Mall, they keep curd and yoghurt. Their cheese selection is better than that of Total Mall and so is the fresh produce. They do not have a liquor section, but then again, the liquor section in Spar sucks.

The toys selection is better than that of Total but the clothes and home products are the same quality - cheap in both price and quality.

The meat and fish counter is as good as Total's but due to the perpetual crowd the butchers are not able to provide personal attention.

Forum Mall: Next to Star is Forum with a grocery store in it. Since the mega grocery stores are next to it, I've stopped visiting the new one (More) that took over the previous Fabmall grocery store.

Big Bazaar: Big Bazaar is always full of people despite the prices and quality of products being pretty much the same as the other hypermarkets. Big Bazaar lacks the finish of Total Mall, Star and Spar and while to some people that is of no consequence, I would rather shop for my groceries in relative comfort, a congenial environment and fast cash counters.

Apart from these big hypermarkets, Koramangala and HSR Layout have regular stores such as Reliance Fresh, Namdhari, FabMall (More), Spencer's etc., and of course the regular mom's and pop's stores - which will never go away.

Despite all these grocery stores I was pretty excited when Nilgiris opened up in HSR Layout, since I love the store's white butter, milk and curd. Also, they keep all the Thai pastes and other Chinese sauces that one has to otherwise hunt around in Bangalore.

Their produce section is very small obviously since people prefer to buy their veggies from Namdhari. 

Time and again I have seen couples poring over their bills outside Hyper Markets. Well, in a mom's and pop's store one would buy only the essentials but in these hypermarkets we all get carried away and buy all sorts of relevant palette titillating expensive stuff.

Grocery shopping has now become an outing on par with going to the other temples of consumerism for Bangaloreans;)