One moment I am at a small table at Barista, waiting for my iced tea to arrive, and the next I am being almost dragged along by a six-foot-four-inch former judoka aficionado into a small store selling fancy salwar kameez and sarees. "Tell me, what's wrong with this store?" asks Paco Underhill, taking a corner near the store entrance. Except that this is a Monday morning and there's just one female customer in the store, I can't find anything wrong with the way things look. Paco ("they used to call my dad Mr Underhill") then takes a hard look at me, pauses for effect and continues: "Who do you think are the primary customers at this store?" It's a no-brainer. "Women," I tell him. "How many women do you see behind the counter?" Actually, there are none. "How would your wife feel if the male salesperson told her that she looked good in a saree or salwar kameez that she was trying out?" I get the point. "Take a look at this," Paco now races to the far end of the store, where there are two trial rooms-rather, cubicles. "A trial room for women," he explains, "must have three different chambers: One, where she can change clothes; two, where she can walk about a little as she examines herself in the mirrors; and three, where her husband or boyfriend can wait, but with equal privacy, so that she can walk in wearing her new outfit for his approval."

It hasn't been 15 minutes since I caught up with the world's best-known 'retail anthropologist' at India's best-known retail destination, but he's already demolished whatever little pride I had in India's organised retail. "A mall should be a place where people can hang around in groups, shop in groups, and display affection publicly," he says. "Unfortunately, the malls in India seem to have taken traditional store formats and crammed them inside four walls."

See the fault: It's not three dimensional

Paco, 54, should know. If retailing were a religion, he would be its high priest. About 30 years ago, Paco gave up part-time teaching (at City University of New York) and retail (he co-owned Ear Inn, a bar in downtown Manhattan that still exists) to set up Environmental Analysis and Planning Consultants, which later got rechristened Envirosell, of which he is now President & CEO. Truth be told, Paco, son of an American diplomat, did not set out to become a retail anthropologist. He was helping out at Project for Public Spaces back in the early 70s when he bumped into William "Holly" Whyte, one of its co-founders and a social scientist who spent his time studying how people interacted with public spaces and then coming up with newer designs that would make them even more people friendly.

Paco's tryst with destiny came in the form of an assignment from New York's Lincoln Center, which wanted to find out if it could expand a small store in the underground concourse without affecting the pedestrian walkways. To do that, he had to observe the pedestrians. One thing led to another and before Paco realised, he was in the business of observing shoppers and helping retailers understand consumer behaviour. By 1999, Paco (it's a Spanish nickname derived from his real name, Francis) had authored his first seminal book on the subject "Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping", which has been translated into 18 different languages since, and followed it up with "Call of the Mall" in 2004 on the "geography of shopping".

Today, Paco is a familiar sight across stores around the world. He travels more than 100 days a year, flying to 19 different countries in five continents on assignments from clients such as Wal-Mart, Gap and Starbucks. A relatively late entrant to India, Paco's Envirosell has tied up with Delhi-based Technopak of Arvind Singhal (who could well be India's very own Paco Underhill).

I could do with a jacket, but where are the new arrivals? Paco at Lifestyle

Meanwhile, Paco has moved on to a footwear store. He isn't happy with what he sees. To begin with, there are no mirrors at ankle height in the store; there's no sign that differentiates between new arrivals and old stock, and he's really sore with the way the lone check-out counter looks: a high chair, an old computer and an even older calculator lying next to it. Our next stop is the departmental store chain, Lifestyle, where, I am hoping, Paco will find fewer flaws. I am wrong. Right at the entrance, there's a big point-of-sale poster, but it is looking into the store, with the result that the shoppers walking in only get to see the poster's blank side. Unable to resist, Paco flips the stand-mounted poster around only to be disappointed once more: The poster is of Microsoft's XBox 360-one of Paco's clients. "I've been telling these guys that such displays need to be three dimensional," he says in exasperation.

Further down the store, he finally sees something that pleases him: a sign at the footwear department that says 'new arrival'. But soon enough, he's back into his fault-finding mode: why aren't the chairs and tables in the store coffee shop the ones that the store sells? Why is the ad on the elevator doors that of a young man when it is senior citizens who are most likely to use the elevator? Why is there no attempt to make bed furnishing more eye-catching? "That's not to say retailers in India aren't doing a good job," says Paco. "It's just that there's so much they can do better. But that's where we come in," he says with a grin, before wrapping up our two-hour mall audit and dashing off for his next meeting.

Paco, ladies and gentlemen, will be back.