let's shop till we drop

~ poonam

i am very little a woman, like a typical woman is made out to be. i don’t wear make up, i don’t own stilettos, hey i don’t even like shopping. yes, i kind of dislike it a little. i do it only when there is need or when i fall in the trap of, ‘oh it’s so therapeutic’. it rarely is. infact quite the reverse, i get more stressed when i come back home with stuff that i don’t really need. the stress is more when i think what my reiki teacher told me about needless hoarding that restricts smooth flow of chi in the home.

when i think of all this and think of what i do at work, i feel like i have dual personality. i make a living selling stuff to people that they don’t need, or can do without, sometimes stuff they didn’t even know existed. ok, you want an instance? take anthuriums. i didn’t know anthuriums were exotic flowers found in tropical climates and that they are available in 900 varieties, most of which are genetically produced by floriculturists, till the brief landed on my desk. today, i sell them to corporates with a promise that this is your antidote to beat stress at work. before me, my ex-boss went a step further and gladly declared to the world that finally, here are flowers that need your neglect. seriously, as if all the world was actually waiting for flowers that don’t require care. funnily, when i look at them and my lines, i get stressed and i don’t care a damn about care or neglect anymore. never did. no one does. and definitely not the poor executives who are getting stress-busting anthuriums shoved down their throats for a price.

so in brief, i am quite a freak. one who has a thing against consumerism, but has very little qualms making money out of it and then goes right ahead and spends the same money on buying things that further the same ‘culture’. as much as i want to avoid, i end up going to the malls that have sprung up in my suburb, atleast twice a month. i hang around the coffee shops which is infact one of the two good things about these malls (the other one is the multiscreen multiplexes). and i shop, even for spinach. when the malls first came up, i had decided i will buy clothes, jewellery, bags but no vegetables and grocery at these megamarts. i have my loyal vegetablewalas and the fat grocer with his ever smiling wife who make sure we never go hungry. they are there even at 10 30 in the night when i discover i have run out of salt or milk and need it right now, else i go hungry to bed. i tried not to be disloyal to them for many months but eventually i gave in. one day i padded my wallet with lots of the same dirty money and headed for the supermarket. took the goddamned trolley and shopped for everything from spinach to thousand island salad dressing. the few tasty discoveries like guava juice and puliogare did not make up for my guilt. but did that stop me? no. i returned and this time, i shopped twice as much.

idiosyncrasies aside, i agree with arundhati on most of her observations in the last post. it bothers me when my 16-17 year old niece’s fun places are pizza hut and the like. when she thinks she has been there, done that only when she has tried all the pastas on the menu of a certain italian restaurant. it bothers me when she insists to taste her dad’s cognac when she can hardly pronounce cognac, just so it will make look cool around friends. her life revolves around, ‘you know i went here and bought this or i went there and had this’. i hate it when i know her upbringing is laced with such superficial events and i can’t do a thing about it. it is so deep-rooted that she won’t have it any other way. i feel she thinks there are two types of people in the world. the cool ones who have lattes and wear tommy hilfiger and the uncool ones who don’t. in her book, the third kind don’t exist at all, ones who can do both. in her life, there are no midways, no neutral grounds. she has strong views, unlike me, when i was young. in my childhood, i was a child. i had no strong urge to do certain things or belong to a certain group of people. i was vulnerable and impressionable. but all hell will break loose, if she ever is.

now i am waiting to see how it will pan out eventually. at 30, will she still be under influence, or will she have seen the light. either way, precious time is lost. and think about it, millions and millions of kids in this country are being given the same doses, the same crap in the name of progress. i have nothing against progress but when it’s restricted to only this, then i have a problem. where are the bookstores, libraries, theatres, swimming pools, playgrounds? where are the hobby classes, painting classes, pottery classes and things like that? also where are the strong-willed mothers or story-telling grandpas? i know where. they are out shopping.