On Shopping

Shopping, for me, is a very harrowing experience. May be it is because I am looking for very specific functionalities in the goods I am going to spend my buck on. Like a good public procurement officer, I am very thorough in framing my specifications. Most people would buy a Levi’s or a Wrangler. I’d buy a pair of jeans – medium shade of blue – between navy and royal, that has lycra blended, is not tight fitting, and has straight pockets. Even the shopkeepers are exasperated when they hear my demands – they are so specific and ‘business like’ that their ‘consumer market’ stocks cannot keep a match.

Similar is my trouble in shopping in big cities. I currently live in Mumbai – the biggest city in the country, with all sorts of things being sold – if it is sold in India, it is sold in Mumbai. Yet, I do my shopping in the south Gujarat town of Vapi – whenever I am in the town for official work, and have some after hours to kill before the return train. Strange! No. As I have admitted, shopping is a chore for me. So I cannot shop in Mumbai. Here, it is like – you want elecronics – go to Dadar. You want clothes – go to Linking Road. You want provisions, go to Fort. I’d rather prefer I get all my things in within one walk. So, I prefer the markets of small towns, where one shoe shop stores all varieties, and it is next to a garments shop, which keeps all variety, which is next to the Pharmacy, which won’t ask you for a prescription to give you the drugs you need for your emergency stock. I would rather not repeat my experience of trying to buy a new pair of shoes in Bandra – no shoe store in Pali Hill area – go to Linking Road. On the Linking Road, all you get are weird sounding ( and obviously pricey like hell) exclusive stores – and no familiar comforting names like Bata, Action or Liberty. In fact, they check you out up and down if you ask for those stores! In the end, you spot a small Woodland store, the only familiar name in this jungle of brands, all waiting to classify you into matrices and S- curves and skim off your money! It is then one realizes – “once a small town shopper, always a small town shopper.”