To shop or not to shop....that is the question
Compared to shopping, esp. for clothes AND esp. in Chennai, Hamlet's "To be or not to be..." dilemma seems far simpler.
I think half of the mankind (sorry human race) only shops because is it scared of going out naked.And since clothes have this annoying habit of wearing and literally tearing off, we're all forced to go shopping for our fig leaves.
Shopping is a pain in the wrong body parts, but in Chennai it can be like a Greek tragedy- you know like Odeipus where the hero has to gouge his own eyes out or some such.
To be fair to Chennai, she has just two of these torture chambers a.k.a MALLS. There is of course Chennai's worriginnal Spencers' "Mall" but I am not sure it counts. In other, less cultured cities, this (poorly) air-conditioned flea market would be called Palika Bazar.
So if you are Adam & Eve and have munched on the Forbidden Fruit and need something trendier than leaves, you should head out to either Express Avenue or City Centre. I personally prefer City Centre- nothing to do with the stuff you get there. It is just that at the EA, I have to pay more in parking per hour than my car's insurance AND spend at least an hour trying to locate my car/ escape route AND I don't even get insulted by a valet!!
Shopping is an experience that one must relish (or so a shopaholic buddy tells me). If there's any truth to what he says, at City Centre your "experience" begins in the parking lot. I think Pan's labyrinth had fewer levels & Rome had fewer catacombs. At the "valet wonly" parking, I have been given such disgusted looks by the valet that for a moment I thought I had just asked Ratan Tata to park a perky little yellow-as sunshine Nano.
If you are shameless enough to survive that (most of us are), you have just passed level-1 of Wolfstein 3D!
Once the bursting-to-the-seams lift has spewed you out on the main floor, the first thing that hits you is the pseudo-french, fleur-de-lis covered, poorly ventilated chambre grande and the sheer population density of that place! I am told that the original Bastille had fewer people- I would've shown you the data but Stalin doesn't like it and I don't like the idea of Gulags a la Chennai. You'll need just a moment to catch your breath. You'll be surprised how quickly you can get used to low oxygen levels.
But that is not the pièce de résistance.
At the centre of the Great Hall of Kazadum (if you don't read Lord of the Rings...shame on you! that's the great underground hall of the dwarves), you'll always find a guy (or a girl with a guy's voice) shouting unintelligibly at a gathering crowd. I once managed enough pluck to ask why he/she was so angry. Turns out he/she was playing Derek O'Brain (very very dumbed down version) to dumb kids and dumber adults picked out of the unsuspecting crowd. Honestly, for kids that grow up in India's "intellectual capital", some of these kids were dumber than the dumb red-necks on "Are you smarter than a 1st grader"!
If you cannot match their decibel levels and if you know that 2+2=4, this isn't the place for you. Step away before you are picked on.
If you are suicidal and want to stick around, I recommend an ipod, Bose headphones and Dropkick Murphy at full blast. You'll go deaf but at least you'll enjoy it.
When shopping, it is my strategy to minimise the pain. Zero in on the target, buy, pay (too bad I have to) and leave. And for all those like me who barely know the difference between a work shirt & casuals, multi-brand branded stores (try saying that 3 times faster) are a blessing. These crowded places have rows upon rows of identical clothes that people like me can safely buy.
But not so in Chennai,
I think it is a law passed by Thiru. Karunanidhi Kalaingar that every store shall have plentiful stock of iridescent clothing- not just shirts but brilliantly colourful bottoms as well. I swear I have seen fluorescent underwear in the men's section. (I suspect that is why He wears sunglasses ALL the time).
If you are persistent enough- or simply don't have clean shirts anymore like me, you can find a few light blues, whites and stripes safely hidden behind all the shimmering gold and red (in the men's section- I don't think anyone would dare see the drag queen section after seeing the clothes they stock in men's ware).
If you find such a shirt, hide it, sneak it to the cash counter, pay and get the hell out. I once asked a shop-boy if they had anything sober he gave me such a dirty look that I thought I had just blasphemed against Rajni (WARNING: NEVER DO THAT). In my defence, he had showed a violet shirt with yellow stripes when I asked for a formal shirt. In his defence, well, at least it wasn't satin.
And since we’re on the subject of shop-boys and other people who work these glitzy stores, you must know the truth about them….They’re Immortal Gods and You are a tiny spec of a mortal bothering them to no end. Or at least that’s how they treat you.
Once while trying to buy a Gucci Sport (yeah I know what it is- if you travel to work by local trains you’ll have to discover the over-priced, coloured, booze in funky glass bottles) for a friend I was repeatedly told saaaar this is cheeper saaar. Well, I am pretty sure he was trying to play a Jeeves on me but it got just a wee-bit insulting after he tried to shove the tiniest bottle of a roll-on deo in place of Gucci. Aren’t they supposed to up sell?
But nothing compares to the insult reserved for anyone who needs an alteration. Since all trousers are made in one size and I am made in the wrong size (, I always have only two options- either alter my height or alter the trouser. The first is usually far more painful. After being promised that I’ll get the pants altered in “max to max” 2 hours, the alteration guy gave me a dirty look and asked me to come back after minimum 36 hours.
Money changers in the Jewish Temple would have been more sympathetic to a leper. I think he was disgusted that I had passed over far shinier trousers in favour of a dull grey. It took me an hour of sweet-talking (very very limited skill at that), yelling (great skills there), threatening and swearing words only I could make sense of in the whole store but finally he agreed to cut & sew my pants in just 3 hours! It took me just about an hour to hunt for my own trousers from his “out box”. I think it’ll be easier find my bro I lost in a kumbh-mela.
All said and done… after much adventure I was able to put a clean shirt on my back & a pair of decent pants on my bottoms.
There are of course more harrowing stories about finding pathetic, incestuous Arundhati Roy alongside Jane Austen (may her soul torment lesser) in the “Classics” section of a book store. But this is not about less than life threatening shopping experiences so I’ll let that pass.
One thing you must appreciate while shopping in Chennai- the people who have done this often enough have a sense of resigned calm about them. Since I am but 25, I hope never to achieve that Buddha-at-shop stage.
I have been sitting on my brand new pants far too long to write this piece of crap…I don’t want ‘em to wear sooner, one trip to Azkaban per year is scary enough.
