India is now very similar to any country abroad. Ofcourse I am not comparing roads, electricity and water availability. I mean a similarity in the sense of what one can get. Most international brands have launched themselves in India and at comparable rates to any international currency. I was really in a dilemma as to what gifts I could take home. Everyone seems to have everything. Malls have mushroomed everywhere in Bangalore and Bvlgari or Prada have become household names. If not the original, most people atleast have a Burma bazaar copy.
I was raised in a middle-class background. During my school and college years, Kids Kemp was the biggest name in town and shopping was generally a tri-annual experience. Once during birthdays, then Pongal and finally Diwali at the end of the year. We never went shopping otherwise. Occasionally, if my mother passed by some handicrafts exhibition she would buy a few pieces of costume jewelry and even that was a big treat. Aunts and Uncles who lived abroad would generously bestow gifts and hand-me-downs to their country relatives whenever they came. And at such moments I would feel like I was Alladin rolling in a treasure cave. If we wanted anything out of the budgetted annual shopping, a long drawn request had to be staged. This outside 'want' had to be logically justified and its importance reiterated. A new dress would never be bought for fashion or because someone on TV wore it. If a new dress adorned the wardrobe outside of its time, it only meant that some other dress was lying in tatters to justify the shopping.
A few years back, someone asked me as I was leaving my apartment if I was going to get some 'Retail therapy' done. It took me a few moments to equate this alien phrase to shopping. How big a part of our lives it has become. All the fashion and art in the world now lies within a few kilometers at the nearest mall. During my school days, we would avidly wait for the 10th board exams to finish because that was when we were eligible for our first wrist watch. It was a greater gift to look forward to than graduating from school or the exam results. The gleam of that first Titan watch would linger before our eyes and pull us through torturous moments of exam preparation. Now, things are different. There are computers available for 2-year olds. Books are interactive;they talk, sing and flash colors at the reader making reading a real-time experience. Shoes for 6 month infants have designer heels on them. The whole shopping experience has now become stratified to suit the needs of every economic group. Noone has to wait or save money to buy what they need. Interests-free loans and pirated, fake products help satiate desires as soon as they spring up.
Is that a good thing, this general abundance and the ability to to get what we want, when we want it? Sometimes I think it is but sometimes I feel it robs the charm of waiting for something special to come by. I don't know how many people from my generation will even remember going through that feeling once. I can say for sure that kids these days will never understand it. There is something very delightful in yearning for what we desire and working towards it, and slowly witness it being fulfilled. It makes what we want more cherishable when we get it. Be it a dress, a holiday, money for an outing with friends, there was always an uncertainity if we would get what we want and when we did, it made the effort of trying and recieving immesely pleasurable. Now things have changed and I can't say that I haven't adapted very well to this instant gratification. In fact I have taken it for granted so much so that I feel it is my birth right to get what I want when I demand it.
Life seemed simple and happy even though everyone couldn't get everything their wished for. Now this plentitude, although very comon and convenient in people's lives, has only created a desire to hoard but not necessarily to cherish. Strange!
