There are three kinds of lies.....

Just back from my weekly vegetable and grocery shopping with heavy bulging bags and a much lighter wallet.

I have this habit of keeping a note of my daily expenditure in a diary.

While turning the pages of the diary to make today's entry, the diary opened to the date 12th May 2007, when I'd bought, amongst other things, 10kgs rice for Rs.150 (@Rs.15/kg) and the week's vegetables for Rs.163.

Today's entry for the same items are Rs. 325 and Rs.398 respectively.

Exactly two years and every eatable on the supermarket shelves has doubled or tripled and yet the Economic Times has been gleefully celebrating every Thursday morning that inflation is -0.1%.

Is this what is meant by "lies, damned lies and statistics!!"

Shopping & Nostalgia

Sunday evening...
Pujas just a fortnight away. ..
A true blue bong has to finish her “Pujor Bajaar”!!!
The realization dawned that I had to do my Puja shopping and HAD to do it TODAY as days for my Calcutta trip were literally numbered.
Four hours later, I was back home, with bulging carry bags and a much lighter wallet.

With swanky malls sprouting in every nook and corner of almost all neighbourhoods, shopping in our metro cities nowadays are all about comfort, variety and indulgence. Be it shopping for clothes, eatables, electronics ….with retail boom leaving no corner of urban India untouched, shopping is not the same as ..say…what it was just half a decade back. We have every global brand offering us the best bargains, the widest choice, the latest trends. Could we ask for more?
A tired me says YES with capital letters.

"Silly woman", you would say, "aren’t you satisfied with the convenience, comfort, the simplicity of walking into a mall and walking off with what you wanted, all in a jiffy!"
The answer to that would be NO, I AM NOT…I don’t like the malls with their almost identical ambiences, the same brands on display, the dead-pan, expressionless salepersons. I love the uniqueness in the smell, sound, taste, feel, dialect of every bazaar. I hate the modern malls which are little more than mere clones of one another. You would call me a regressive, nostalgic fool craving for the past.

Well…that’s the way it is with me and thank God, that my good old city with its old world charm still retains the flavour, albeit in bits and pieces….where makeshift stalls give the mega malls a run for their money..EVEN TODAY! Where the bazaars are still teeming with people queuing up for fresh food instead of the frozen stuff of the supermarkets!

Well, I’m talking about shopping in good old Calcutta. Being away from my city, I miss the haggling and bargaining, where bargaining to the last rupee was more a matter of pleasure than monetary loss or gain. It was almost like a war of words and tenacity, spiced up with wit and banter, between the zealous salesmen and the potential buyer. The whole atmosphere was almost carnival like with neighbouring stalls vying with one another for the attention of the shoppers passing by.

The gradual upgradation from “Bonti”..to ”Didi” and to the present “Boudi” which sometimes gets replaced by Didi (when the hawkers are in a doubt regarding my marital status) are something so unique and yet ubiquitous to roadside shopping in Kolkata. Another decade or so and I would reach the “Mashima” stage!! For the grossly uninformed, these are the different forms of exuberant greetings a hawker uses (depending on the age of the prospective buyer…) to call out to the customers.

Well.. no nostalgic remembrance of Calcutta shopping is complete without the mention of the rolls, phuchkas, jhaalmuris……how I missed them all this evening when I had to satiate my post-shopping hunger with a measly masala corn.

Bibliography: Bonti:little sister; Didi:Elder sister; Boudi:sister-in-law; Mashima:Aunt