Quo Vadis?

There are two shops where you seldom question the bill as much as you would in normal circumstances and it now appears that you rightfully should since it is your money. The first instance is at the medical shop and the next is the jewellery shop. You would have noticed that in both shops you will have the seller making a lot of complex looking calculations before they give you the price in a piece of paper. This was quite common before the demonetization and in most mom and pop type of stores. In this post I will restrict myself to the latter the jewellery shops because they seem to be taking up a lot of newsprint space these days. So I have observed during our rare visit to the jewellery store after shortlisting the piece and observing the sticker on it the sales man promptly pulls out a paper and proceeds to furiously calculate some figures. Upon the first set he will proceed to do some more calculations while the buyer in the meanwhile will be torn between looking at the s...

The other day I realized when I was looking for an umbrella that there are no more fancy shops these days. I guess for the 90’s generation this may be as alien as the “goli soda” and the “pepsi cola” among others. But for those like me they were the one stop shop for everything. What is a fancy shop? For those not aware these were the shops usually run by Muslim shopkeepers from Kerala who stocked and sold anything school kids may need from maps to junk jewellery and all in between. If there was a school requirement I would head to the nearby fancy store and the shop keeper usually never had no for any requirements that the school may come up with. If there was a social function that required a gift to be purchased again the friendly neighbourhood fancy store which also sold the wrapping paper for it along with greeting cards. Landmark and Archies happened much later and probably led to the demise of these fancy stores. Today the swanky air-conditioned gift stores are a fa...

Remember Will Smith in Enemy of the state? He went shopping for lingerie which was a big mistake because afterwards he became THE enemy of the state. Thankfully such things don’t happen here, and more importantly I don’t need to ask someone for the size because I ensure the wearer comes along. I was very uncomfortable when D said that I accompany her the first time. Now I have an issue with D’s shopping that I may have mentioned before. I do not mind shop hopping and pulling out the entire rack to search for that one item we intended to buy, but I do not approve walking away empty handed after ransacking an entire shop and finding nothing. I believe a good sales person should be appreciated and the best appreciation is a sale. So I don’t approve of the routine of running from shop to shop and buying nothing. Crazy you may say, but after so many years in sales, I empathize with every good salesperson. All the above mentioned, shop hopping, raiding the racks are avoided when we go linger...