For several days now—and with a week more to go for Christmas—many of the larger stores in Mumbai have been festooned with green and silver wreaths. If the Diwali season that just went by is any indication, the jewellery stores in the more upmarket neighbourhoods will soon be covered in orchids. Whole walls and awnings of purple and cream orchids. On a random terrace one can see signs of a party in preparation: trios of pink and yellow balloons interspersed with blue streamers in a pre-determined pattern. Magazines give tips on setting a festive table with unusual tableware. Night life anchors on TV accost celebrities as they enter party venues and get them to discuss their clothes, their style. And a swelling tribe of trained designers is working round the clock coordinating clothes, accessories and wedding backdrops to picture-postcard perfection.What is so remarkable about all this? The growing prosperity in urban India has been noted ad nauseam. As has the rising trend of consumption. There is, however, one area that has received less attention than it deserves, which is the matter of taste, the kind of taste that is driving this new consumerism. The oversight is understandable. Taste is a difficult quality to identify/quantify, let alone describe, and yet it is an interesting aspect of the ongoing social transformation.The point is simply this. In the past one would have talked of the monuments of ancient India, Indian folk art, the classical arts, and so on as being the repositories of grace, innovation and beauty. The old rich had their family heirlooms, dignified by age and skilled craftsmanship. But the new rich were known for bad taste.In fact, the well-trodden way to announce one’s arrival to riches was with the most ostentatious trappings. Gulf returnees built wedding cake mansions in Kerala. In the north, they bought gold and gave sumptuous dowries. The larger the object, the gaudier the show, the better it was deemed. At the same time, despite the desired flamboyance, items of consumption were invariably also weighed by their worth in terms of re-sale. Gold was not just an advertisement of social standing, it was also prized as an investment.These attitudes, in all likelihood, still strongly prevail in most parts of the country. Yet, over the last few years, there has been a change in aesthetic sensibilities as well as in the value assigned to various symbols of status. The change has been perceptible in the new emphasis on packaging. On the mind-boggling sums being spent on home interiors and the growing fascination with designer clothes and lifestyle products that include such fripperies as carved book ends and decorative candles. The new rich seem to be willing to pay, and to pay well, not only for greater subtlety of colour and style, but also for a commodity that cannot be quantified and which may or may not have any resale value, namely design.Those in the business invariably ascribe the trend to increased travel and exposure to the West. There are other reasons, such as the availability of new materials, that make greater experimentation possible as well as the impact of the media that has been pushing fashion with an uncanny determination. None of these satisfactorily explain how a male dominated society could be drawn so acutely towards what has traditionally been perceived as a more effeminate concern with style. Yet a certain discrimination in taste, whether real or perceived, has suddenly become a much desired and much sought after status symbol.What the new rich acquire, the middle classes aspire to. Indians have always excelled at producing cheap imitations of anything and even the fashion designers who complain about knock offs would probably agree that quality has improved at every level, including the blonde-and-red tinsel wigs and rd Santa caps that are the kitschy must-haves of the season.What does all this add up to? In a way nothing has changed. Much of the fervid spending around us is geared, as it always was, towards assuring status and it is hard to talk about extravagance and opulence in a country like India without moral qualms. At the same time, the new found appreciation of beauty does have an unconsidered aspect. It is interesting to speculate on how a more discriminating aesthetic sensibility and a heightened need for quality could translate into action in other areas: could it lead to a resurgence of the classical arts perhaps? Or greater engagement on civic issues?
