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COVER STORY: URBAN YOUTH
Spending Power Defines Success
Meanwhile
catching the fancy has become easier. The Christobal smells, the knife-like
stilettos, the low-cut dresses, the sinewy cuts, the silver-tongued persuasions,
the seductive leers-all have become the plumage of the Luckies, the collaborators
in their courtship drama. And they feel that the finer their plumage,
the better their chances with the opposite sex.
Or the same sex. The progressive attitude has
meant that more gays (and to a lesser degree lesbians) have come out the
closet enjoying a freedom that was earlier not possible or permissible.
Now it is even fashionable to be gay, and if not, then a bi. Many discos
now have gay nights on a particular day of the week which is mostly jam-packed,
and private gay parties in suburban farmhouses are routine affairs.
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The motto of the Lucki:
Have fun, and have fun spending. Rs 1,000 a night is "cool".
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Sex is a word that is heard a lot among the Luckies
but rarely overemphasised. It's something that the Luckies take for granted,
what they mundanely say is "no big deal". But preparing for
it is.
"I like my boyfriends rich,and if they
are older or foreign, even better!" giggles Sona (name changed),
20, who confesses her monthly expenses are over Rs 1 lakh. The daughter
of successful MNC professionals, she is indifferent about marriage. "That
is for keeps, but it's for later. After I've climbed all the highs there
are."
But some, like Khurshed who does "promotion
work" and lives between Mumbai and Muscat, are also Luckies who work
hard-but only because they want to play harder. And don't ever challenge
a Lucki that he won't be able to wear a Helmut Lang outfit the next Saturday
and expect to win. Luckies can go to any extent to get rare and chic labels,
even if it means paying twice the amount for a fake. They're pretty sure
that even Helmut Lang wouldn't know that it was made in Jalandhar.
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MUMBAI
Advait, 18
Doesn't care so much for labels, yet is self-critical when it comes
to a nightout at Ghetto or Not Just Jazz By The Bay. His first love
is theatre — he joined Raell Padamsee's classes when he was
just seven and now organises theatre workshops.
"I'm not going steady but I see a
lot of women."
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Success is the star which the
Luckies chase with awesome spending power. Five-star hotels, the final
frontier of the prodigal, have multiplied as if they were on a fertility
pill-in the past 10 years Delhi has seen six additional hotels and land-strapped
Mumbai five. Hangouts, bars, pubs and chains like McDonald's have sprung
up in every shopping outlet. Party-throwing became a rage and to cater
to specialist needs, event managers became the new tenors of revelry.
Delhi-based Front Promotions, an event management company, reports an
almost 50 per cent in theme parties over the last two years, much of the
demand coming from party-throwers in their late teens and early 20s. So
does Brilliant Entertainment Network and Magnum Events, a big-budget organiser
that recently completed an elaborate Y3K party with futuristic décor
of Martian landscapes and asteroids. Twenty-five-year-old Delhi-based
Jayati Puri regularly has Bollywood parties with massive billboard cut-outs
and superkitsch posters. "Fantasies can end up becoming reality,"
she says. This generation is clear on that.
The Lucki ranks are continuously swelling along
with their cash clout. Veteran discotheque manager Sanjay Tyagi, now with
Mirage at Delhi's Crowne Plaza Surya, has over the past year noticed younger,
smarter, more chic entrants, up-to-date with the latest music and with
a lot more variety in their dancing as well. Tyagi says that it is also
fashionable to throw a party at a nightclub where a youngster (most likely
his parents) can end up spending up to Rs 5 lakh per bash, which includes
the cost of exclusively hiring out a disco for the night. DJ Rummy at
the Hyatt's notoriously-priced Djinns reckons the Luckies spend a minimum
of Rs 1,000 per head per night. In Mumbai's trendy disco-cum-pub, Club
Abyss, the top billers also turn out to be college-goers or young professional
welcoming their first taste of salaried life. It's the motto of the Lucki-have
fun, and have fun spending.
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"They're a disadvantaged
class, they'll realise later."
Ashish Nandy, psychoanalyst
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For the Lucki, a priority is looking good. Decades
ago the ambassadors of Indian beauty were too few. Gayatri Devi, toasted
as the world's most beautiful woman, was a member of the ra-ra set. Reita
Faria's Miss World was like Milkha Singh's Olympic record-something part
of folklore, a welcome aberration. But Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai and
Diana Hayden changed all that on the dazzling new pre-millennium stage.
And beauty and glamour were suddenly great career options.
Malavika Tiwari, actress and one-time fashion
model, says when she was breaking into the beauty industry nearly two
decades ago, each one of them had to fight their battles on their own.
"But today they just wax attitude all the way. They want to save
the world, express concern about world health and children, but in the
end all they want is to get a break in Bollywood."
Both Tiwari and Suneet Varma, a favourite designer
with the young, feel that this generation is not all that lucky. "I
knew this guy who wanted to be a model after studying five years of dentistry,"
says Varma, "It's just a desperate urge to be famous."
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