Behind the counter deals

If the title smells of something like an unlawful or illegal transaction it could be only in your imagination. This narrative is about the traumatic experience of accompanying my family members on a shopping trip. The only consideration shown to me was the offer to handle the swiping of credit and debit cards at the cash counter. To keep my team spirit up, they elected me as their baggage bearer.

The family always travels in comfort and a call taxi was already waiting to take us all to the shopping area. They always chose that place as it had every conceivable thing on offer and on each one of these trips; I mentally cringe at the thought of my bank balance doing a parachute jump. The creaking sounds from my mental gears must have disturbed their animated conversation about fashion jewelries. They directed 1000W glares on at my head to roast out the stray thoughts and continued as if nothing had happened. At that point, I stopped thinking like a camera shutter.

In all, we climbed the stairs and took the lifts in four different jewelry shops. To me these appeared like a stage set for the shooting of a street scene, with milling crowd at the sales counters and cash counters. In this melee I lost headcount of my family now and then but the heads were very busy to notice my trailing. After considerable time, they came out without buying anything. Surprise number one puzzled me a bit!

The next two hours, I spent in getting the feel of textiles and gathered information on spinning and weaving techniques to kill time.  During these two hours, countless saris were taken out, spread on the counter, refolded and stacked. If the colour was appealing, pallu was not; if design was enchanting the colour was not; if all were passable it had the wrong price tag! Honestly speaking,I have never stayed for more than 10 minutes inside a cloth shop including the few minutes spent at the cash counter.

During the wait period I heard the family reeling off “Kanchi, Dhramavaram, Arni, Pochampalli, kashmiri, Mysore, Kota, Bengal” and other household names at the counters leaving the salesmen crying without recourse to kerchiefs. Similar exercise was repeated in the selection of ready- made dresses for ladies.  As an afterthought they invited me to select something for my daily wear, in the men’s section.

Surprise number two numbed me into inaction for two reasons: in my usage daily wear means inner clothing and to buy that a whole family need not go shopping; I don’t wear ready-mades!

When this late wisdom dawned upon them, they trooped into the floor holding a collection of pant and shirt clothes. Here they unilaterally selected colours I normally avoid. My dislike was written large on my face and this made them to stick with their selection. As a quid pro quo , they allowed me to have a go at the children’s wear and  select a few items of my choice with their grumblings in attendance. An icing on the cake?

Surprise number three was waiting on the pavement shops – they spent equally ample time gazing at the wares but bought variety of things and clothes, not before the formalities like hectic haggling and heated discussions with the vendors or among themselves.

Having exhausted their energy and my patience, they searched for a good eatery to replenish their lost vigour. The billing machine might have heaved a sigh in relief when it finished the printing of the bill.

The best of all was the surprise number four – I did not know that my family could single handedly cause a famine of sorts at short notice; I do not know how they could appear so satisfied after buying things from hawkers.

I got the answers on the way back home. At the jewellers they were only interested in getting to know the latest trends; at the clothe shops the idea was to check out some tall claims made by their friends and at the same time look for something new; shopping on my behalf was a face saving measure ‘from whom?” I could not guess; the eatery was their main aim and the pavement shopping a time pass!

Before getting down from the taxi they collectively said, “Our behind the counter shopping saved you lot of money and the incentive for that was the pavement shopping followed by the visit to the eatery”

They left me to settle the taxi fare and to worry about the depleted bank balance.