Oh Shopping, why must you be a Nightmare?

I recently went to Great India Place (GIP) mall. Let’s just say my sisterly concern caused me to be roaming around a part of what isn’t Delhi. I felt more claustrophobic than one would on Blueline buses that ply on what is Delhi.

The said sister was slightly upset with me. I had misled her into believing that I would arrive an hour earlier than I did and I was also dreadfully tardy in responding to her queries about my location because I wasn’t in the mood to put my book down. I wondered why she messaged me with such regularity from a mall. Sure, it’s boring to shop alone but not so much as to have to send messages every 8 minutes? Turned out she was waiting for me at the metro station, hoping against hope that I would indeed arrive at the agreed time.

It wasn’t entirely my fault. All right, it was mostly my fault. I tried to explain to her that I had done everything I could to be on time – skipped the lens routine, reached the metro by car, ran up the stairs and took the train to Vaishali even though I needed to go to Noida because I couldn’t stand to be doing nothing while she waited for me. She pointed out that I should’ve left early, writing all in caps to indicate her displeasure. Unfortunately that idea hadn’t occurred to me. I had already decided to have a lazy morning so it was a bit difficult to change the course of things. She didn’t know it at the time, but I saved her life by making her wait.

You see, GIP isn’t a mall so much as it is a poorly stocked labyrinth of colourful signs with girls who are no longer teenagers humming the tunes of 90s boy bands and short boy-men who wear too much cologne cheap deodorant. It also has more children on a weekend than the average pre-school on weekdays. Most of these children have a delightful way of slamming themselves into passers-by, doing their child-launched-from-a-cannon-at-a-moving-target imitation.

When I did enter the mall, it had so many people that I thought there must be something really wonderful to buy there. Every shop was overflowing with people but nowhere did I find anything that I would be caught dead wearing. They couldn’t possibly all be keen social scientists observing behavioural patterns like me.

Thankfully, I wasn’t shopping for myself. My sister asked me if it isn’t the most wonderful thing to be shopping for someone else, even more so than shopping for oneself. I thought for a minute. She must be making some less obvious point because she most certainly isn’t an altruist. I nodded. “Yes it is,” I said. “When you shop for someone else you get the satisfaction of buying something that you consider worth buying without the guilt of having spent your money.” “Exactly!” she smiled happily.

At one of the shops we wandered into she found a sweater that she considered pretty. I noticed that you could see through it and observed that it probably wasn’t very warm. “Who cares about warmth?” “Well, it’s a sweater, isn’t that what it’s supposed to do?” I asked, somewhat naively. “No! It’s supposed to look good!”I put my finger on my chin thoughtfully and asked her why she didn’t just buy a t-shirt in that case – it would certainly not be bulky, it would be cheaper and probably more stylish. “But then I wouldn’t be dressed for the weather,” she shrewdly pointed out. “Ah! I see it now!” I said. “You want to look like you chose comfort over style but you’re really choosing style over comfort.” “Exactly!” And I always thought it was the reverse.

The best thing about the day, other than all this worldly wisdom, was the plate of golgappas I ate outside the mall. Not just because they were quite good, but because it was a refreshing change to be surrounded by cars instead of people.