SELECTION Light Up

Omy, that's a nice watch," said a gentleman to the lady seated next to him at a formal dinner. "How much did you pay for it, Five?" ''Eight," replied the lady. ''And I mean pounds." And went back to her soup.

Descartes' Cogito, Ergo Sum may be relevant in grey-matter heavy Bangalore where IQ, more often than not, has a correlation to personal worth.

Elsewhere, Possidere, Ergo Sum (I own, therefore I am) may well be the defining spirit of this decade.

Eight thousand pounds (roughly Rs 6,23,076 ) isn't, for some people, a lot of money to spend on a bauble but it is, again for some people, a number of an impressive enough magnitude to be introduced, subtly or otherwise, into polite conversation.

As for the thingamajig itself, possessing it is as important as knowing the right people and being seen at the right places. You may not smoke cigars (leave alone, know how to smoke one), but you'd better. You may not know how to pronounce Piaget (pyä-zha ), but you'd better sport one on your wrist. And you may not have the faintest idea of how to use your Nokia 7650 video-clip phone, but you'd better tote one along.

I own, therefore I am.

I own, therefore I must be somebody important.

Meet obsessive status seekers and compulsive consumers rolled into one composite whole that is, at once, a marketer's delight and a Page Three hack's bread-and-butter.

OBSESSIVE GIZMO COLLECTORS There's no question of status here-these guys simply can't keep away from the latest doo-dads.

Jakka Bhakta Reddy, CEO, Cognos: The G-man The newest palm, a Fujitsu tablet, the latest Nokia phone, key-chain vaults, digital pens-there are some people who can't keep their hands away from any or all of them. Jakka Bhakta Reddy, the 30-year old CEO of Bangalore-based software hotshop Cognos Infotech is one. A Handspring 270 Treo serves as his mobile phone and pda rolled into one. When he travels abroad-10 days a month on an average-he calls the map of the city he is in onscreen and navigates around. India doesn't have such Global Positioning or allied location-based services and Reddy confesses that "there are people who think it doesn't therefore make sense to own a Treo". "But I need to keep up with the latest gadgets; in fact I am thinking of upgrading to the new Treo 300 which has more functions". A Sony vaio and a Magellan GPS unit complete Reddy's armoury. Increasingly, digital devices (D-devs for the cognoscenti) are becoming the benchmark of how with-it a person it. Cars are cumbersome and don't quite boast the same OTS (Opportunity To See or Opportunity To Show-off) as d-devs. Besides, given the pace of technological change it takes stamina (and oodles of the green stuff) to stay abreast the latest devices. For execs like Reddy, there's a significant functional pay-off too. See my PDA; see me.

The high-profile lawyer across the table from this writer is important. There are three mobile phones on his desk, all Nokias, a communicator, a 6100, and a 7210. He has five cellular connections. And doesn't quite remember how many phones he has changed in the past year. One reason is a whim. Another is functionality.

That may be true for phones, but watches?

The lawyer has a Cartier, a Piaget, and a Bulgari at home. Right now, he's sporting a Audemars Piguet-he actually unstraps it and hands it to this writer. Then he points to the fancy writing instruments on his table. "This is the Mont Blanc mechanical pencil." We are impressed.

Flaunt It

There are several theories doing the rounds that explain this new-found obsession with status symbols. Sociologist Dipankar Gupta believes-and he has written about this in his book Mistaken Modernity-that with physical manifestations of class (such as turbans, moustaches, dress) disappearing, people differentiate themselves through brands. Everyone has a cellular phone. So, it becomes imperative for an individual who wants to stand out to have the newsest one to be launched. Or the most expensive one. Everyone wears Gucci sunglasses. Hence, the growing demand for Oakleys. "There is a set of people for whom it is very important to have the first-mover advantage so as to be seen as savvy, special, or simply different," says public relations consultant Dilip Cherian. And they will do anything to be seen as that. Carry four expensive-looking pens that will never be used, enroll (on the sly) in wine-appreciation classes, learn to air-kiss. "People are fanatical about what other people think of their belongings," says Suhel Seth, the CEO of advertising agency Equus Red Cell and a regular on the capital's party circuit. "For them, status is defined through tangibles, not personality."

That explains why Obsessive Status Seekers have to be the first to buy a new car. Or a new phone. "The motive is to charm others-an effort to enhance their status in the eyes of others," says Meenakshi Gupta, a social psychologist at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai's department of humanities and social sciences. Besides, modesty is out in the new India. It is alright to be rich. And it is alright to let the world know that you are rich. (There is, of course, the reverse snobbery-one of its best practitioners is one of India's best known technology entrepreneurs-of being needlessly austere, but that is another story). Everything, much like in the newest Bollywood blockbuster, has to be larger than life. Jay Gatsby, not Mahatma Gandhi, is everyone's role model although most status seekers would be more familiar with the second name than the first.

Sociologist Dipankar Gupta claims this is a result of a cultural vacuum where consumerism becomes an anchor. People make the mistake of associating modernity with cars and new-age gadgets, he explains in his book. It could be that. Or it could just be the desire to belong to the smart set and, at the same time, do one better than the rest.

To the status seekers themselves, there's nothing extraordinary about their behaviour. Businessman, politician, and man about town Amar Singh fondly recollects the days he would wear clothes designed by Versace. These days he wears kurtas (you need to do that sometimes to be taken seriously in politics) but compensates by getting them designed by the best in the business. "A kurta is a kurta, " he argues Stein-like, "and a jeep is a jeep." "I am not swayed by brand names, but by functionality-I do live in style but don't overdo things."

Singh may be sincere, but every status seeker would like the world to believe that he or she doesn't belong to the species. These wannabe wannabes wouldn't like the world at large to know that they want to be. That would be infra-dig. And so, secure in the knowledge that nothing succeeds like excess, they strive on ceaselessly.

-additional reporting by Venkatesha Babu & Dipayan Baishya