Cities of Show-Off

Every city has its own unique characteristic. The cities develop these characteristics mainly from the type of people they accommodate. Interestingly, every city has its own style of show-off too. I have lived in four different cities and based on my observation and understanding

Delhi is the city of the hardworking Punjabis and harsh jaths. Here you will see the show-off of money and power. For example, the Punjabis are so fond of showing off their fort-like gates painted in golden or copper colour, huge cars and expensive garments and jewelleries that now people have started using ‘punjabi show-off’ as a phrase. This speaks enough for itself.

Kolkata is the city of culture. Here people show-off their intellectuality. You will find people discussing about Pablo Neruda, Orhan Pamuk and Amitabha Ghosh in crowded buses, trains, metros and other crowded places. You may also find some heated discussion on 'How Obama's economic policies affecting the lifestyle of the people of Anguilla" or "How the ideology of Che Guevara would have helped the party workers in Singur" or "How the new satellite launched by NASA will actually worsen the lives of Pinta Island Tortoise in the Galapagos Islands" and so on... In Kolkata people also show-off the fact that they are actually not showing off colourful and flashy clothes and expensive items.

Bangalore is the IT hub where IT stands for Information Technology. Huge offices of the multinational companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Infosys, TCS, GE, etc are here. Here people love to show-off the name of the company they are working in. And how do they do it? They wear their office identity cards and go for shopping and movies on weekends :). Sometime they also wear T-shirts with their company names embossed on it and go to vegetable market, fish market and sometime to outstation also. Quite smart!

Mumbai is only city where I haven’t seen people showing off grossly. There are people who show-off their looks, status, education, etc. but it’s there everywhere. My brother when used to go to office, he used to take the local train. He used travel in first class. He used to find crorepatis sitting next to him in plain clothes showing off nothing. I don’t know the reason why people in Mumbai are so polite. But one reason may be that there are too many rich industrialists, too many celebrities, too many highly educated and too many powerful people staying in the city. May be that’s why general people don’t feel like showing off as they are no match to them.