Aaj khush toh bahut hogey tum,” said the beer glasses on the top shelf of Happily Unmarried in Forum.

There is reason to be happy indeed. A corner of the ground floor in the Elgin Road mall now stocks all the fun things that the urban brand brings with it. And if you’ve been buying their stuff online, the offline store means instant purchase.

A ‘Kat Le’ doormat would send the message across to the brat of a brother. And, how about an ‘Awara Hoon’ keychain for your globe-trotting friend, perhaps a ‘Zindagi ka Suffer’ luggage tag to go with it. There’s a ‘Selfie Queen’ phone cover too. Now, who doesn’t know a friend who would love that as a gift? 

Three cousins — Jay, Priyanka and Rahul Daga — have managed to get the franchise for the brand in the east. “I saw the Khan Market store in Delhi and found the products very interesting. I thought that in Calcutta we don’t have anything like this and so we took the first steps to get it here,” said Rahul, who plans to take it to other malls around town depending on the response.

So far, the response has been ‘Lager than Life’, if one goes by the football beer mug perched on the second shelf.  The best-selling item since the 60sq ft store opened on March 6 is the ‘Tumse Na Ho Paega’ notepad, quite the opposite of what the store has managed to do. Following close on its heels is a doormat that reads: ‘Leave your shoes and ego outside’. (Now, 80 per cent of the customers who walk into the store are girls so that makes perfect sense.)

“But the funny thing is that most are buying it for the guys,” laughs Rahul. And are most of them, well, happily unmarried? “Half of them are. The other half are married, who want to see what’s in here for the unmarried.” 
To each his own. As ‘Baba Marley’ on the T-shirt just hanging there on the steel rod says, “Love the life you live. Live the life you love”. 

 

 

 

 

Karo Christine Kumar
(happily unmarried)