Monday, December 21, 2015

Why i HATE shopping

I hate shopping. Coming from a woman, I know it sounds absolutely absurd but this is the in-your-face truth. I hate shopping. Ok ok more specifically I (more than hate) DREAD shopping with my mum.
Now that I have learnt how to drive and proclaimed by all to be a good enough driver, I have been promoted to the status of being my mum's official chauffer. My sister's wedding preparations are underway and there is absolutely no room to breathe. Half the time we hit the city with bundles of dresses and materials to be stitched, huge agendas and a 10 month old who bawls away for no reason.
Preparation for a day of shopping happens the previous night itself when my mum comes into my bedroom armed with jewellery designs, a towering pile of materials, sample cards and a stress ridden face that promptly proclaims that we have absolutely no time and so much to do.
So we sit and put together an extensive list of what time we need to leave, the shops we need to hit and how much time to spend in each shop.
This was the list we put together two nights back:

11:00 Leave home
11:45 Reach Convent Junction
           Head over to S designs
           Hit Goodwill
1:00   Lunch
1:30  Go to M.G.Road
          Visit Milan
          Alappat Heritage showroom
4:30  A quick coffee and head home

I am super proud of my organizational skills and i must say, i am equally proud of my mum who never manages to adhere to a single one of my lists.
It's not that she doesn't try folks. It's just that the pull of shopping always wins hands down.

So there i was driving and reminding my mum over and over again about the importance of sticking to the list. Uh-huh she goes. Definitely she says. Absolutely she nods.
I think of the many,many miracles performed by Jesus and give myself hope for a miracle atleast this time around.

So we reach the city. I park while my mum takes my son in his walker and the mountains of bags out of the car. I ask her specifically to wait for me outside S desgins; that we would go in together. Specifically. Outside. S designs.
I park and come around and of course no sign of my mum, my son or the mountain of bags. Assuming she went into S design, i rush in climb their three floors approximately 3 times in a vain search, finally give up and come outside panting and see her happily strolling out from the adjoining clothing store.

"Oooh! There was a lovely sale here! Look at the material i found! Lucky i went it!"
"Amma i asked you to wait outside! I was running around trying to find you!"
But my rolling eyes and gasping complaints were silenced by her quick disappearing act. She was already browsing through the stuff in S designs by the time i finished the first sentence. Ah well! Atleast she was in S designs.
It is 12 and we were still at S designs. My mum is ransacking their shelves for a special colour. She was looking for a purple that is not the colour of a brinjal or a plum. "Something in between she keeps saying" rummaging through their selection of purple material. "Is that all the purple you have?", "Show me some more", "Do you have this in georgette?" The questions go on and the staff begins to look more and more surly. Somehow her search from purple moves on to reds, blues, greens, yellows; infact every colour under the spectrum except purple. When one chimes on a store clock i am in absolute awe at all the sans purple material my mum has managed to dig out. I tug at her salwaar rather frantically telling her we have lots of work to do.
"Yes! Yes!" She says and shrugs me off, promptly moving to the sarees section. Lord knows for what though! I ask her the question and she goes on about how they would be functions AFTER the wedding for which she needed to prepared. After people, after!
By 2:00 pm, i managed to tear her from the store (no she didn't get the perfect purple) and shove her into Goodwill.
By this time my son has woken up and after a feed, starts crawling all over the place. I keep a steady jog ignoring the steely looks from ladies who i bump into and whose feet i stamp in the vain attempt to keep up with my son on an absolute hyper mode!
My mum shifts from earrings to necklaces to make up to bags to wigs (yes wigs! And though she had perfectly good hair, bought a hair piece that looked like the tail off a petrified squirrel! Inspite of the bickering she put her foot down and said she was going to wear it but on the wedding day, she could not find it. She never will. Not where my sister and me hid it on her! ;)) to bracelets to plastic flowers to lord knows what else at an equally hyperactive mode.
By 2:30, i literally screamed for food. "Feed me! Feed me!" I screamed! My son screamed along with me as it amused him so!
Without taking her eyes off a pair of glittering earrings, she asked me to grab a bite. When i ask her if she didn't want to eat, she didn't even hear me! I swear the essence that comes off clothing and accessory stores is purely what sustains her. I mean the woman goes a whole day without food or water while shopping. How is that even remotely possible???

Anyway so i eat at the speed of light (i usually eat at the speed of sound) and then ran up to see my mum still holding up and examining the SAME pair of earrings she was holding half an hour back. What? Heh? What in the world i ask her! And she says she is checking if the purple in the earrings is the same elusive purple she was hunting the world for. Oy ve!

At 4, we head on over to Milan. I sit in one corner my hair in my fists as my son makes tents out of the mountains of purple my mother pulls out of the stacks. A sales lady seeing my helpless situation, brings me a cup of coffee and a side of sympathy.   Again the rainbow charade happens when from purple my mum moves through a kaleidoscope of colours not one bit related to the wedding theme.
I am just about ready to book myself out when the miracle of the century happens! "They have nothing i want here" my announces annoyed and giving the sales people a hawk like look she sweeps out of the store. It takes me a while to register that we were done with material shopping for one day! I almost cried with happiness. Then i cried with utter disappointment! We still had Jewellery hunting to wrap up!
By 6, the burger in my tummy has said bye bye and the internal organs eagerly wait for a new friend to digest. I have tried on half the jewellery in the store and yet my mum does not find the exact one she is looking for (surprise!) What surprised me even more that even after hours of staring at bling non stop, she still has eagle eyes! (For eg: the 30° bend on one petal on the 16th flower in this necklace is off by one degree type eagle eyes!) I on the other hand was ready to do a Charles Ray for life.
By the time we get home, my mum is brimming with happiness and absolutely full from the thrill of the hunt. I felt kidnapped, tortured and starved. I drag myself home, bathe and feed my son, bath and feed myself and throw myself onto my bed for a night of complete blackout.
But no! In marches the hunter with another set of lists for tomorrow. I cried. 

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