Management has literally come to the marketplace. As retail chains line up across neighbourhoods offering one stop shop solutions to all our domestic needs, shopping for rations essentially turns into a task that’s as goal oriented as its time bound. So much so, that we run to the same super mart for buying everything from shaving cream to vegetables. Now, while most of us rejoice in the 5% rate cuts that are to be gained from picking up a packet of french beans, along with the detergent and frozen peas, what we fail to realise is that this discount comes at a price.
Buying at a retail store is a mechanical exercise that accustoms us to head to the same racks to pile in the same stuff and hear the beep of the barcode. It is a choice that we make to turn ourselves into robots, literally sucking the joys that our parents had the chance of deriving from a visit to the market place. Since the advent of convenience stores, how many of us have gone back to the local vegetable market. Back in the days of the venerable mandi, visiting it for rations was a part of the experience of cooking.
As human beings, our impulse is to feel and the experience is as important as the end result. From the unattractive manner of simply dumping vegetables into plastic racks to the fact that most of what arrives at these air-conditioned units is a day old or simply rotting in the artificial environment, the so called convenience of picking up your veggies from where you buy your facewash, can never compensate for what you stand to lose. All it takes is but one visit to your long forgotten vegetable mart to spot the difference. Brimming with energy and bursting with colours, these brightly lit environs are as welcoming as they are enchanting. It’s like being inside a photograph.
Picture rows of tin roofed shops with their wallpapered backdrops and brilliant bulbs. While you walk by, beaming eyes peer at you from behind columns of attractively arranged farm fresh produce. Every face tells a story and every story gets a face. Sounds of frenetic haggling, of shopkeepers persuading and helpers announcing the next big price slash intermingle with murmurs of private conversations and the cacophony of chit chats. This visit is momentous not just because of the sudden explosion of colours, odours and flavours that greets us round every bend but also because of a more sombre realisation. This twenty minute trot is perhaps the only time in the week when we look beyond our comfortable existence and interact with the other India.
Food becomes a great equaliser summoning everyone from princes to paupers and bankers to peons, to the same court. If we’re social animals who interact for inclusion and acceptance, every visit to the local mart is an exercise in community building and in feeling a sense of oneness with the mass of humanity that surrounds us. Pitched against million dollar enterprises, local traders wage a losing battle. Their invisibility makes us immune to their plight.
Protecting the local against the global requires an engagement that goes beyond words and translates into action. Have we ever dared to exact five rupee discounts from branded outlets to allow ourselves to reclaim those from the needy? How many decades old, round the corner shops have we seen perish in our lifetime? Do we want our children to lead such mechanical lives devoid of life’s simple pleasures? Adventure lies in surprises .You don’t necessarily have to turn a robot and shop mechanically at the retail chain and wince about that weekend in Goa. Adventure can happen anywhere any day. Somedays it lies in seeking the best brinjals or in choosing to not squabble with a father of five and discovering the joy of giving.
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