Multi-grain bread and Surf Excel for top loaders
Elizabeth Eapen -
Wednesday, August 12, 2009 10:37 AM
Architect and writer Gautam Bhatia's series of rants against our unplanned cities (read the 'City Centre' articles here) concluded in Business of Life last month. A recurring grouse is that "in dimension, scale, numbers or aesthetics, what people want and what the city offers are opposing and often unmanageable compromises". While one of the arguments Bhatia makes is for a cohesive urban fabric, my own grouse is that at the end of the day we are between two stools: we have neither the planned city, which would obviously make life easier, and in the (stumbling) runup to that, we also seem to have lost the sense of community, which was what we once had.
Yesterday, I spent close to an hour on the road in search of a particular brand of bread that seemed to have inexplicably vanished off the shelves, battling traffic in narrow market bylanes, heat and morose shopkeepers. A cohesive urban fabric was the last thing on my mind. I roundly cursed the retail distribution system and rued the price I pay for living in Lutyens' Delhi. Shopping for everyday items here is terribly inconvenient. If there's no multi-grain bread today, there was no Surf Excel for my top-loading washing machine yesterday. While I am yet to figure out the science of why the washing powder should differ depending on whether you dispense it from the top or front of the machine, fact remains that it's practically impossible to get everything you want under one roof.
When choices and needs were fewer, wasn't life happier? Before the high rises and demarcations, at least an uplifting sense of community prevailed. I can't really claim to have a meaningful relationship with any of the shops I frequent now. But in the town where I grew up, the arterial main road held everything from the local dentist to my father's office.
My favourite stops included the Ladies' Centre, or "house of ladies' essentials". This was where I bought my first jar of 'vanishing cream' and the multicoloured ‘love-in-tokyos' for my hair. Next was Valavi the stationer's, in whose cool interiors you could inhale, like a junkie, the sweet, intoxicating smell of scented erasers, poster colours, new paper and ink.
Further along the road there was the fruit seller Murugan, with his makeshift stall. He was a great friend of my father's, not just for the copious amounts of fruit we bought, even at exorbitant prices, but for the news of the day, both political and social, that they would exchange as he wrapped apples, oranges, grapes and mangoes (always more than the weighing scale said) for us in newspaper, expertly twirling the packages around with twine.
After the fruit shop was the general store, S.P and Sons, run by two brothers (sons of S. Pottivelu), with its shiny counter. It was here that we bought all our groceries, a simple and uncomplicated matter at a time when both multi-grain and washing machines, top-loading or otherwise, were unknown.
Two stops away was Bata, with its dapper, always smiling manager and eternally predictable, limited and dull range of shoes. Between regulation black shoes for school and simple white ones for tennis lay my well-charted region of choice. Sandwiched between Bata and S.P was the bookshop I loved, with the books always in complete and random disorder (but that made the search all the more exciting; where's the joy in today's bookstores where you know exactly where to look?)
Next door, the 'cool parlour', innovatively named Simla (without the 'h'), had a limited menu. But all I wanted were beef cutlets accompanied by a tart onion-vinegar salad and the 'ball ice cream' that was the rage then. It came in a hard plastic ball-shaped container, and you could take the top off and spoon up.
At all these places, it was never just the purchase. The whole thing took on a different flavour, marked by real conversation and shared lives. A familiarity that might seem excessive today, but bereft of continually frayed tempers, surliness, existential angst. Needs were so few, and the fulfillment so gratifying.
So tomorrow I shall do the rounds and ignore the missing multi-grain. I will also buy Surf Excel for front-loaders, and the consequences be damned.