Chapter 454 Sunshine City
Sunshine Shopping Center has opened. This mall is very large and the main body is made entirely of granite and marble.
It is located at the foot of Delhi, halfway between Gurgaon and New Delhi, and the location is quite good.
Because there are many multinational companies or embassies of other countries in the Gurgaon area, they need to go to New Delhi frequently, and they will inevitably pass by the Sunshine Smart Business District.
These elites and executives of large companies are all wealthy people and are also the target consumer group of Sunshine Business District.
They also need such a shopping mall to satisfy their growing consumption desire.
Sunshine Smart City is very large. It not only has shopping malls, but also numerous office buildings, apartments, and even a park with an artificial lake.
People were amazed by this modern city that sprang up from the ground, so they simply called it "Sunshine City".
A true city, literally, a city within a city.
This is known as the largest shopping mall in Asia and is famous for selling luxury goods. It has four floors of brand design stores and a Michelin-starred hotel on the top floor.
During the opening days, it attracted half of Delhi's population to come and admire its unparalleled appearance. Many people were stunned by the glass curtain wall building that reached the sky and reflected the sunlight.
In fact, some of those office buildings and apartments have not yet been completed. The first ones to open are only shopping malls and some entertainment venues.
The construction of such a large-scale commercial district must be completed in batches.
Shopping malls that focus on consumption naturally rank first. After all, the sooner you start business, the sooner you make money.
Leila was also attracted by the famous Sunshine Shopping Center and took the opportunity to come here for a stroll after her evening shift.
Everything has changed since I set foot in Sunshine City.
The road is very wide, not much worse than the Zhongyang Roundabout in New Delhi, and it is very clean without any garbage.
As she strolled along the asphalt road, she even felt like she was working at her own Sunshine Hotel.
Well, they are all Mr. Sur’s properties, so there’s nothing wrong with having the same style.
Various chain brand stores can be seen everywhere on the streets, including foreign brand stores that are rarely seen even a few blocks away in New Delhi.
Leila walked through rows of shops selling tie-dyed scarves, jewelry and crafts, and a group of hurried backpackers, and arrived near Sunshine Plaza.
There are so many people here that you can even see Sun TV's broadcast van interviewing passers-by.
To Leila, the craft shops and tall office buildings on both sides represent the pinnacle of urban civilization.
In the heart of this materialistic metropolis, with its skyscrapers, McDonald's has been inserted at just the right moment, as if to emphasize how cosmopolitan Delhi is now.
But before it was finished, the old man next door came.
The two rivals love and hate each other, and never leave each other, and quantum entanglement reaches every corner of the world.
Their appearance tells people that New Delhi is indeed at the forefront of internationalization, and Sunshine Plaza is the vanguard of the trend.
Leila walked into McDonald's and was saluted and allowed through by a doorman dressed like a soldier in a parade, wearing a peaked hat, a belt, and boots.
There's no beef on the menu, and lamb is included in burgers. The atmosphere is lively and cheerful, with families and friends gathering together, completely different from McDonald's elsewhere.
In the United States, McDonald's is often filled with solitary diners. Here, dozens of girls in uniforms, mostly from the Northeast, wander around the restaurant, waiting for customers to finish their meals and clearing their trays.
Leila found her sister, Alice, at a table against the wall.
The two sisters agreed to go shopping today, and McDonald's was their meeting place.
Throughout the entire Sunshine City, only stores like McDonald's are relatively affordable.
Of course, for most Delhiites, this is still a high-end restaurant.
Alice was tall and slender, with a darker complexion than Leila. She wore casual cotton clothes and looked just as relaxed as any other McDonald's customer.
A recent college graduate, full of energy, she quickly finished her Happy Meal and chatted with her sister about where to go next.
Leila didn't order any food, but just kept fiddling with a large iced Coke. She got off work at two in the morning and didn't get home until three-thirty, so she had dark circles under her eyes.
She was a few years older than Alice, with a lighter complexion, a thinner build, and short hair. She wore a cheap green top and jeans, and her only visible adornment was a pair of small earrings and thick red nail polish on her nails.
Although she works at the Sunshine Five-Star Hotel and has a very good salary, she lives a very frugal life.
She had to pay for her sister's college tuition, her brother had nothing to do, and the lives of her siblings in Delhi depended entirely on her.
She didn't have any fancy clothes and looked gentle and quiet, unlike the other waitresses in Sunshine Hotel, who all wore black stockings, short skirts and long legs.
Unlike Alice who is always excited, Leila looks tired but very strong.
"I don't know when we can move into the apartment here. Have you seen outside? It's so beautiful, just like being in a foreign country. People even speak in whispers." Alice looked out the window with longing.
"Then you have to find a good job first. The rent here is very expensive. The cheapest one costs tens of thousands of yuan a month." Leila held her chin and smiled silently.
"Ten thousand rupees!" Alice was stunned.
"The hotel is also Mr. Sur's business. I heard that internal employees will get some discounts."
"That's too expensive. It's enough to buy a big house in Imphal."
The Imphal that Alice mentioned is their hometown, the capital of a state in the northeast.
Their father is a Tangkur Naga from Ukorul district, while their mother is from the Kaum tribe in the Mairin district.
To someone sitting in McDonald's, the sisters might look vaguely East Asian, or perhaps Nepalese.
However, their parents' union represented the fusion of two different races: the Naga people from the northern mountainous area of Ukorlu and the Mailin people from the rice-growing country.
This also resulted in the two sisters sitting in McDonald's with a sharp contrast in appearance and personality.
Their father was a minor government official, now retired, and her mother taught Hindi in a school.
Influenced by her parents, Leila carries the genetic characteristics of a mixed tribe. Due to the frequent gatherings between tribes, Leila grew up in a very integrated environment.
While she was still in school, she traveled with her friends to Patna, the capital of Bihar state, which is located on the border with Nepal.
This trip also made Leila want to break away from her ethnic background. She didn't want to look different. She wanted to look forward, not stay closed, and see the outside world.
If she were still at home, she would definitely be married and probably have two children.
Leila works long hours at the hotel, with little free time. She works six days a week, usually taking a break around 3 p.m., when the hotel is relatively quiet and she has some free time.
Sometimes she would stay up late, like yesterday's night shift, and she would use the daytime to go shopping with her sister.
She had heard of Sunshine City a long time ago, but had never been there. As they entered the mall, they gradually became confused.
The people around her were middle class, undoubtedly wealthy, but they did not look like the customers Leila had seen in hotels, spending hundreds of thousands of rupees on luxury goods.
The store looked like an ordinary franchise store, and they finally realized their mistake when they asked the waiter where Louis Vuitton was.
The two of them went to the wrong place. Although this place looks like a comprehensive shopping mall from the outside, it is actually composed of two adjacent shopping malls, both of which belong to the Sur Real Estate Group.
They went to a mid- to low-end shopping mall and a more luxurious luxury shopping mall.
It looks like a five-star hotel, with fountains, brass railings and marble floors.
There is an open lounge on the first floor where customers can sit on the sofa and eat snacks and drink tea, which makes Leila feel that it is more like a hotel.
They went up and down the mall, sometimes taking the stairs and sometimes taking the elevator, wanting to see what the legendary luxury mall would look like.
The luxury stores around them seemed empty, so they decided to go into one, which turned out to be a Paul Smith outlet store.
But the two sisters turned away at the last moment before entering the door, not having the courage to go in.
They continued walking along the corridors surrounding the foyer, puzzled themselves as to why they hadn't dared to look inside the store.
Downstairs in the lobby, a tall, slender girl in high heels, with her hips raised, was striding across the marble floor.
When the two got closer, they found that she was posing in various poses for photos. It was a fashion shoot.
Leila was still wondering why she couldn't enter the Paul Smith store. She didn't often go to brand stores, but she was the bar manager of the Sunshine Five-Star Hotel after all. She was used to big scenes and never felt so uneasy.
Somehow she was more susceptible to the environment and more vulnerable out there.
The reason isn't because everyone in the store knows they can't afford what's in there.
But being in Delhi meant more to them, as they were afraid that others would laugh at them for having no money and daring to enter such a place.
In the West, due to the long-term surplus of capital, many people may look down on luxury goods.
Luxury brands have been around so long that they have lost some of their original meaning, but in India, they still represent the powerful.
They had originally planned to go to Jester's Coffee for a drink, but now Leila was unsure, as who knew how much a drink would cost.
So they wandered around the entrances of luxury stores, staring at the glittering windows, trying not to stand out too much.
"Hey, that seems to be..." Leila suddenly saw a familiar figure.
"Who?" Alice stood on tiptoe and looked around curiously.
There were two figures in front, slowly moving around near the luxury store. No, to be more precise, there were two figures protected in the middle.
Is that Mr. Sur and Bollywood actress Tabu?
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
