Of Shopping

No, Bacon could not have written anything about this! Even his much-read ‘Of Travel’ bypasses the issue. While we can barely separate travel from shopping, Bacon makes an oblique reference to it, telling his readers that it isn’t desirable to pick anything or everything that comes his way while travelling…picking up foreign culture demands some degree of pragmatism on part of the traveller. But for us, the lesser mortals (I mean the presumably morally corrupt, with no admirable respect for tradition, and that’s what the brooding vanguards of Victorian morality think), the ‘foreign-bred’ is dearer to the ‘home-grown’, and we really believe, at times, ‘Ghar ka murgi dal barabar’. Therefore, with shopping malls mushrooming faster than monsoon-enthused mushrooms and driving us crazy with a gigantic spectrum of brand-names, our path to consumerist salvation seems to have been carved out.

Believe me, I’m not here to write about the evils of shopping; I’m very much in favour of the great economic liberalization, which has, at least, if not anything else, truly liberated us from the trauma of wearing unimaginative apparels and of having no sense of accessories. (Let me stop here and share something with you: In spite of such tsunamic revolution in the attire arena, I more often than not suffer visual strokes on having to watch my irredeemably middle class colleagues sporting prehistoric clothes and bags which should have received honourable awards in the dumping grounds for being so characteristically ‘dumpable’). Anyways, DKNY, Lacosté, Bare, Levi’s, Reebok, Adidas, Westside, Zodiac, John Miller, and so on and so forth have joined hands to make Gardens of Eden of the Shopping Malls…the only difference in this Paradise is that covetousness here is no sin. In fact, the “Dil Maange More” slogan popularized by Pepsi is the driving mantra!

My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains my sense, if I do not have too much in my wallet to spend in the shopping malls. Oftentimes, I feel that I may even forego my honesty and heed Iago’s culpable advice “Put money in thy purse”, if that means endless shopping. My friend U and I never tire of lamenting our proletariat status every time we lay our eyes on diamond-studded watches and designer furniture that hang like forbidden fruits right under our nose. My friend D vows to himself that he would never come to shopping malls again, for these are evil enticements that drain his bank balance like flood streams, but has never been able to keep that promise. Nothing on the display windows fails to astonish him, and very often than not, he strips unsuspecting mannequins to sheer nakedness, for he usually falls in love with them (I mean, their clothes). Another friend of mine P (who is also like an elder sister) blames it all on her zodiac-sign (Libra) for loving all the ‘good things of life’ and shops till she drops believing that her birth-hour had already predetermined her fate as a compulsive shopper. I am an equally powerful Libran who never feels tired of accompanying P when it comes to shopping, be it here in the city or as far away as Rajasthan. And U keeps on updating me on discounts, and our social network dotted with award-winning shoppers pass on the news with electrifying speed across the city and very often than not we find our friends having an unwitting get-together at these Shopping Elysiums. My abhorrence towards buying vegetables and fish has also evaporated ever since Spencer’s and Big Bazaar have come into the neighbourhood, replacing the nightmarish walk through the odiously smelly, muddy, blood-stained alleys of downmarket bazaars with dream ambling on marble floors in air-conditioned comfort. My mom rails at me for the vegetables are mostly stale and tasteless; but, I choose to overlook such demerits for I believe shopping malls can do no wrong!

We know that shopping malls swindle us into buying things at much higher prices, and the discounts they offer are but a eye-wash. For, the discounted price is the real price of the goods, and the seller is never at a loss. Yet, we love to indulge in them…it’s like gorging on chocolate brownie when you know you must be on a diet. There’s no end to it. Macbeth had murdered Duncan believing that’s it, only one, just one murder, would settle his life as a monarch forever. Well, let’s kill Banquo as well! Just two…then, my position is secured! O no! The poor man had turned into a serial killer by the time the realization dawns upon him that “Life is but a walking shadow…Full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing”. So, beware! Once you step into a shopping mall, believing “O this is just my first time…who’s going to come here again? It’s so expensive, my God!” You are wrong, my dear! The last time never comes. I would say come back, as many times as you wish. Don’t take it so seriously…what if, even when I have alluded to something as serious as Macbeth?