Panaji
All American Diner plays 1950s rock’n’roll through a tinny speaker, the retro booths are traditional red and the burgers are suitably oversized. The period decor and details are all right, but it all just feels so wrong.
The restaurant is 8,000 miles away from where the “diner” was born on the northeastern coast of the United States in the late 19th century. It sits on another continent, in a city that until recently didn’t exist, and now, a decade since construction began, sits just one-fifth finished.
Outside the window, it is not small town America that is viewable, but the rolling, verdant Sahyadri mountains of western India. On an August afternoon, it’s the permanent downpour of monsoon season “ not late summer sunshine “ beating on the sidewalk outside. The soundtrack is a tired collection of rock’n’roll, a dozen or so songs on repeat. Smartly dressed waiters greatly outnumber their clients and watch customers’ every move like hawks. There is no folksy smalltalk. When you take a sip of water, your glass is refilled before you have the chance to set it down.
American diner folklore traces the birth of the roadside “lunch wagon” to Rhode Island, 1872. Around the same time, the British Raj was establishing itself in India. Among the signature institutions of British imperial rule were “hill stations” “ conurbations built high in the hills for colonial officials tired of the mad hustle and bustle of Indian cities. Since independence in 1948, no new hill stations have been constructed “ until Lavasa, the first city in India to be built whole cloth by a corporation, and where this simulacrum of an American diner sits. Officials in the city say they have already entertained official delegations from China, Latin America and Europe, keen to see if this might be the brave new world for 21st century cities.
Lavasa is the $30bn (£20bn) baby of Ajit Gulabchand “ a high-profile billionaire industrialist known as much for his mega-projects like highways and dams as for installing a helipad on his office building in Mumbai “ and his powerhouse Hindustan Construction Company (HCC). It is an ambitious, and deeply controversial, project to build an entire private city from scratch. The name Lavasa is the invention of a US branding firm, having no meaning, but meant to conjure up images of mystery and exoticism with its abstract poeticism and hint at Hindi.
Energetic yet calm, aspirational yet affordable, hi-tech yet simple and urban yet close to nature Lavasa promotional material
According to the project’s promotional materials, life in Lavasa “ two hours from IT hub Pune, and four hours from Mumbai “ “has been envisioned as energetic yet calm, aspirational yet affordable, hi-tech yet simple and urban yet close to nature”. A promotional brochure describes it as a “stirring adventure,” “an enterprise that will redefine the very notion of a city as we know it.” (Upon entering Lavasa, you must brace yourself for an onslaught of corporate bromides.)
India is certainly rapidly urbanising “ hundreds of millions of people are expected to move into India’s overcrowded cities over the next 25 years. For ambitious property developers, the city-building game is a potentially big profit-making opportunity. The success of Lavasa as a model will have a big impact on how the process of rapid urbanisation in India, and further afield, plays out.
When fully built, Lavasa intends to consume 100 sq km “ about the size of Cardiff or Brighton and Hove in the UK “ and will cater to a total population of up to 300,000 in five “towns” built on seven hills. The first of these is Dasve, which is still under construction after delays the development’s planners blame on government approval being temporarily withdrawn shortly after building started.
Next to the All American Diner is the Waterfront Shaw apartment-hotel complex. Working behind the counter is Sakrita Koshti, originally from Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujurat state. Koshti, 22, says she works nine-hour shifts seven days a week “ out of choice. She saves her days off so every two months she can get a week back home with her family.
“I wouldn’t live here if I wasn’t working here,” she says. “The main reason is there are no schools out here. If I get married and have children, they cannot get settled here in Lavasa.” This highlights one of the major problems for Lavasa “ how does it turn itself from a quirky weekend getaway into a fully fledged “smart city” where people live and work full time?
