Shopaholic?

The 2^nd of Jan 2010 shall go down in history as Yashada’s day of shopping.

I woke up at 7.30 in the morning for the sole purpose of marauding a clothes store. I have never really been stricken by a shopper’s craze as such, and never thought I would be the types to wake up to an early morning alarm just to go shopping. But, it was the first day of an off season sale, I was low on cash and I badly needed clothes for my field trip. Also, I wanted to avoid the crazed Lokhandwala crowd that looks like it’s come prepared more for warfare than a sale, early morning would be a good idea, I thought. Sadly, all the women in Andheri thought the same, and I found the store to be jam-packed at 9.30 in the morning. 9.30 in the morning!! How insane is that?? So after battling for the trial rooms with women who had picked up every piece of clothing they thought would fit them and after battling some more with women brandishing credit cards at the payment counter, I was out. The actual shopping part took about 25 minutes of my time, the rest of the hour and a half was the battle part.

But this was just the beginning. The more interesting event happened post-lunch.

Nachi, Viraj two of my closest friends were facing a dilemma-

You see they have a very dear friend from their school years, whom they have not met for a while, because the dear friend is in the US. This dear friend’s birthday was coming up and, good kind hearted souls that they are, Nachi Viraj planned to courier a birthday present to this dear friend all the way to the US. Now, the dilemma rested in the fact that they didn’t know what to buy as the birthday present. And the reason this was a dilemma for these boys was the fact that their friend happened to be a girl.

What do you buy as a birthday present for a friend, if the friend happens to be a girl?

Wow, I thought, men really don’t know what women want.

So I played consultant. I met them at this place in Ghatkopar called R World, it’s supposedly the biggest mall in Mumbai/India/this side of Asia, or something like that. In short, its HUGE.

We discussed the situation over frankies and colas at the Foodcourt. I asked all the relevant questions-

Who is this girl? Where does she live? What does she do? How old is she? What does she like? What does she not like?

After doing what I hoped to appear like some deep thinking, I walked out of the foodcourt and behaved as if the situation was under control and asked them to follow me.

And that is exactly what they did.

If anyone had seen us then, they would have seen a girl being literally followed by two, bewildered looking boys. Poor souls, they had no idea what to look for and where. I suppose they were like 3 year olds following their mother in a fair, scared not to stray too far away from her.

I was fascinated to realize how simple the task actually seemed to me, and how much importance they were giving to this situation. As if it was a vexed problem that needed some intense thinking and studying to be solved. But I played along and gave them solace by agreeing that the situation needed a great deal of effort to resolve. I think I did a pretty neat job. Hmm, maybe I should go pro.

If I had to buy a gift for a friend, I would have bought her something she likes, or, if I was in almost constant touch with her, then I would have known if there is something she was looking for, and according to my budget bought the gift. Or, in case she had everything she wanted, or if no ideas came to me, I would have gone strolling around in stores. And the moment I would have seen something good, I would have just bought it, provided it fitted in my budget. Simple!

But I should have known, Nachi Viraj- my ‘ clients’- are IIT-ians/IIM-ians. In other words, they are methodical, precise, and their brains work on logic not impulse.

So for three hours we searched for purses, bags, bangles, bracelets, earrings, necklaces, clothes….

And after they had surveyed the whole of their sample space did they make very logical and non-impulsive decisions, and finalized the gift items.

All this required a lot of effort on their part, and finally when we were done, they dragged me to this place called Jammin where they splurged on loud video games that involved a lot of guns, bikes and cars and crashing a lot of these things together. I had more fun watching the mad grin on their faces as they played these games. Jammin completed these two boys the way Wonderland completes Alice, or Neverland completes Peter Pan, or like Hogwarts completes Harry Potter. Nachi, Viraj had arrived! After three hours of looking at girly stuff, I think they deserved it!