Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The Non-shopaholic



Believe me or not, I don't enjoy shopping.


I've noticed how others go crazy over sales and some of them must shop every season or they go into spells of morbidity that are too much to take. Compulsive shopping is something quite alien to me. At times, people even view this as a disorder. "What? You don't like to shop? And you're a girl?" they say to me. Ignoring the particularly overtly sexist overtones, I find myself strangely disinterested in indulgent-shopping.

It's not like I don't shop. There are loads of items of daily need that must be purchased: soap, toothpaste, pens and stationery. However I cannot share the sentiments of some of my friends who feel filial loss if they fail to participate in the ongoing sale season.

My shopping is limited to requirements. If I don't need a new pair of shoes, I don't feel like buying one. Unless my watch stops beyond repair, the prospect of buying another simply does not occur to me. Likewise, If there's no definite purpose, I hate hanging out in malls, looking at stuff I'm never going to buy (or need for that matter) in large glass windows.

Recently I'd been to the shoppers' heaven in Delhi, Janpat, with a friend. There was so much on sale - silver earrings, multi-coloured scarves, hoards of bags of all sizes, shoes, trendy tshirts, home decor and what not! My friend reckons I'm the only person who went in and out of Janpat without having bought anything. It was weird.

Yet, there is one place my inner-shopper comes out - a book store. I spend my entire year's savings in the annual bookfair in my city. I could spend all day in a book store, be it in College Street (the book lovers' paradise in Kolkata) or the fashionable Starmarks in South City Mall. I never run out of the need to but books. I buy books I don't need  and badly need, books I like and highly detest. Only when I come home laden with books that weigh more than myself do I have that glowing smile on my face like Isla Fisher in Confessions of a Shopaholic.

I wonder what this makes me, a bookaholic perhaps.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

On Visiting the National Capital

New Delhi. The Washington DC of India.

Smooth, wide roads.  Numerous fly-overs. Manicured gardens. Extensive shopping malls. Historical buildings. Ginormous university campus. One-minute service Metro.

For an all time Calcuttan like me, it was overwhelming.

Delhi is so much bigger than Calcutta. It has so many things my home town doesn't: discipline, cleanliness, space, luxury, fashion...

When I got back, however, I realized Delhi will never have something Calcutta has: Dark, steel-grey, heavily rain-laden monsoon clouds.