Shopping

I had been to shopping yesterday and bought a week's food and stuff. In the UK, its all self dependency: "you choose, you buy, you swipe and you pay." A very few are the people around, but those are profound to help and assist.

The malls are huge and almost have everything at one place, from the delicious pastries to the tissue rolls to wipe our asses. When I look at the cats' and dogs' food section, I feel someday the world would be such a social place that these malls would have food sections for ants till lions and elephants. Then there would be a wide scope for architects, civil engineers, product designers to design things for size of the elephants. The toilets would be equal to the size of the malls to accommodate elephants in them.

You take a trolley, and enter the mall, initiated with automatic doors. The sections starts with oranges in fruits and ends straight down to baby nappies. The complete mall comprehends CCTV cameras inside and outside of the mall, maybe to catch a hungry bastard, irresistible to keep the food outside his stomach. Initially, I was prone to be one of those bastards, because of the long walk inside the mall and seductive food sections, which make it almost impossible to keep the food packed. Lately, to avoid being caught, I go for shopping after having a heavy meal.

I've learnt a lot of things since I've started the food shopping. What to buy, how much to buy, what not to buy and when to buy. Its like performing a research project in consumer psychology, involving just myself.

Initially I used to shop without any planning and it would cost me a lot of time. Twenty minutes of walk to the mall, an hour wandering around to look stuff than buying, and wasting money on biscuits and chocolates on a hungry stomach, and finally regretting the buying of biscuits after eating the whole packet while walking back. Now, I make a list, eat a heavy meal and then leave for shopping. 'Heavy meal' is important, because if I just have a meal, I get hungry while walking around in the mall.

The worst problems when you go for shopping without a meal, in a hungry stomach are: you buy more than you need, which wastes money; you need more carry bags, ecological problems; you carry more than you can physically bear and eventually make a taxi back your home, which is a waste of money and deep regression as you're about to finish a packet of biscuits after your tummy is full. These are factual statements, tested and tried out on myself, by myself for myself.

I desperately miss the Indian grocery stores, supermarkets and malls. I remember my parents used to take me to the 'Tulshi baug' and 'Laxmi road' (these are the places in Pune where you can get all the things on Earth and learn the money saving techniques of Puneties). I think bargaining was invented and founded in Pune, by the 'Sadashiv Pethies' ('Sadashiv Peth', an area in Pune) and eventually spread the art all across the city.

Although the trip used to be tiring the fun creates homesickness in my mind. It used to be a picnic more than shopping. The salted peanuts, spicy 'Bhel', 'Paani Poori', and the ice cream while coming back with the load of material, each bought in discount, and the breath of relief and satisfaction after returning home is still pretty fresh in my mind. I still remember the loud cry of my brother and me for buying toys. Sometimes we used to get a toy, but it also depended on the mood of my parents. Sometimes it would end up in a slap. It was a complete freedom, without any tension of money, dad was always there to care.

Now the new shopping culture is gradually getting deployed in the Indian retail genre. Trolleys are replacing the hands holding their little ones. The art of bargain is on the verge of extinction and self payments through debit and credit cards are on high. All in one, everything at once, saves a heck of a lot of time but is it satisfying and fun, is still a question.