It was in 2001 when I was an intern with a semiconductor company in Pune, that I had my first brush with the thrill of shopping all by myself. Today, I can say with supreme confidence that through the intervening 17 years, I have grown to become a full-fledged shopaholic and turned into a specialist in online shopping, if I may say so myself. But back in those years, when online shopping didn’t exist or wasn’t as evolved as it is today, and malls weren’t so commonplace or in fact didn’t exist, I would spend weekends walking down small streets filled with little shops of all kinds. This was a ritual I looked forward to and something I did in all the places that I have lived in – from Lakshmi Road in Pune to Colaba in Bombay to Jayanagar 4th Block & Commercial street in Bangalore to Ranganathan Street and Pondy Bazaar in Chennai. These areas used to be my favourite hangouts.
Walking down crowded streets, taking in all the sights, sounds and smells that define the locality, used to be an experience in itself – an integral part of the shopping exercise. The very opportunity to observe different kinds of people and absorb their mannerisms or activities was an exciting bonus! On the flip side though, the shops were a true test to your endurance against yielding to temptation. From handbags to dress materials to fancy earrings to hair clips and slippers…the shops would have them heaped in front of your eyes in a wide choice of colours, designs and prices. I would invariably end up spending at least a few hundred bucks every time I visited these places. I would be lying if I said that I did this absolutely free of guilt – the guilt of spending money and accumulating things. The monster always reared its head whenever I handed over money to the shopkeeper or occasionally swiped the card. Yet, happiness would soon envelope my heart the moment my eyes fell on the shopping bags that held my precious assortment of things that I had lovingly purchased.
When I speak of my life as a crazy shopper, how can I not talk of the hoards of books that I have purchased over the years? I have such delightful and fond memories of walking down (sometimes in the rain) to the Oxford Bookstore near Churchgate station in Bombay, the Strand Book Stall both in Bombay and Bangalore, the iconic Blossoms in Church Street, Bangalore, and the unforgettable Landmark Bookstore that used to be located in the basement of a building in Nungambakkam opposite Ispahani Center and of course, the one in Spencer Plaza on Mount Road!
Years later, now that I look back at my shopping behaviour, I realise I found shopping therapeutic. It calmed me down, it gave me joy, it gave me a high. And it still does, the only major difference between then and now is the way I shop – I do it all online now. For someone who used to shop at street-side shops and later, stores in malls (I suppose I became a victim of commercialisation too), this shift to the online world of shopping is quite dramatic. I wouldn’t have it any other way now. A lot of factors have contributed to this – the chief ones being one, quite ironically, my growing impatience to find my way through crowded streets and shops; two, the impossibility of shopping at peace with two kids in tow; three, the sheer magnitude of the online shopping space that promises to deliver anything from groceries to books to laptops at your doorstep, from not just your own city but from other parts of India and sometimes, other countries too; and four, the convenience of everything just being a click away. The possibility of taking as much time as you want to decide on what you want to buy by moving things in and out of your cart without having someone constantly looking over your shoulder in a desperate attempt to ‘assist’ you with your purchase, is something, I feel, too good to resist!
I love this ‘moving to and deleting from the cart’ business. I can never imagine doing this at a brick-and-mortar store with ease. It’s fun to keep adding stuff that appeals to you into the cart and then sometime later, sit and stare at the items in your cart, taking decisions in your head and chuck off those that don’t seem interesting anymore. And that’s just how I have bought a whole variety of things including designer notebooks, handbags, clothes, fashion accessories, customised paintings, curtains and bedsheets, furniture and…a truckload of books! All online… from my laptop, sitting at my study table – the place I consider the cosiest corner of my home.
In my dreams, I would often encounter the things I bought and wake up dreamy-eyed, feeling a gush of joy about the stuff I purchased. The truth though is that the happiness, in most cases, would last a couple of days and then the ‘special’ would enter the realm of the ‘ordinary’. Is satisfaction ever a word that goes with shopping? Not in the lives of many people, I suppose. At least not in mine.
Do I miss ‘real-world’ shopping? Not much. I perhaps miss visiting bookstores the most, especially the joy of leisurely flipping through books, sitting on a couch, and then shortlisting some for purchase, getting them billed and walking back feeling not guilty but proud (I spent the money on books!) and clasping the latest book haul tightly in my hands. But barring a few, bookshops are no more like what they used to be, what with iconic bookstores shutting down and many growing to accommodate a host of other things with very little focus on books. I have chosen to flow with the tide, embracing online sites for buying books, with the option to download previews on one’s Kindle coming closest to the experience of looking through a book and taking a call on picking it. The attractive discounts and the availability of almost any book in online stores make it very hard for someone like me to close the window and shut it out.
Having said that, I should also mention that there’s still a lot of scepticism that people tend to have about online shopping. While the reasons for this scepticism could vary from bad experiences to a reluctance to using cards online to getting plain confused looking at so many options, I guess I have been quite lucky and it’s worked well for me so far.
As an interesting consequence, I have also grown to become a kind of ‘the go-to person’ for any tips related to shopping online. And I have realised, quite to my own amusement, that it’s hard for someone to stop me (or for that matter, for me to stop myself) the moment I begin extolling the virtues and advantages of shopping online, on how you must pick e-commerce sites based on reviews, and so on… and soon, dish out a list of sites that one needs to check out – this list featuring ones that sell customised stationery, designer stuff, books, clothes, sarees, jewellery and other fashion accessories, groceries, home-décor, and furniture.
The fact that the husband too is a die-hard online shopper only means that the kids come up with statements that leave me wide-eyed. Like how my 4.5-year-old daughter who has a school concert coming up told me, “Amma, we still haven’t bought the costume for the concert.”
“Yeah, I know,” I told her, sounding a bit preoccupied, “Let’s go to the shop this weekend to buy.”
“But, why?” she asked breezily and then ran out of the room, only to come back with my phone held in her palms and said, “Here, order it from Amazon or Myntra.”
I stared at her dumbstruck for a few seconds before I burst out laughing. And if you are still wondering what we did, no surprises there – we ordered her stuff and received it within two days too!
So, amidst all this hullabaloo, minimalism seems a distant dream, at least for now. As more and more attractive goods flood the market, I feel more and more like a warrior who must battle the harmful forces of temptation and attachment and emerge victorious. Whether I will, and where things will go from here, only time will tell. Till then I guess I will just go with the flow and do the “enjoy maadi”!