Retail Tradition

Apologies for yesterday's badly written post on Las Vegas. I thought of a superb introductory sentence but then forgot it as I had to go for lunch. My bad :( Losing inspiration is the worst thing that can happen. If I were a professional writer experiencing a mental block I think I would get seriously suicidal. Thank God this inconsistent blog is not my profession!

Oh, I forgot to write that Dr. Monteiro wrote that those people in India who provide exemplary, word-class customer service are our baniyas and little general-stores wallas! The Marwaris, Kutchis, Gujaratis. A traditional family business. I have had the best experiences there in terms of efficiency and availability. And much more warmth even during bill-paying. And these are the places our protective mothers have had no qualms about sending us, even when we were little, because they knew they wiould not cheat us or lech at us. Whatever we wanted, glazed paper, cards, plastic containers, craft materials, chocolates, rubber bands, safety pins, water bottles, pencil boxes, christmas trees, they had in stock. Teenaged boys nimbly leaping up on stools to get boxes containing the items teh customer needed from the lofts, 3-4 boys serving along a counter about 12 feet long crowded with women and schoolchildren, always remembering who wanted what and how much and yelling the amount to the cashier, usually the patriarch, in his safari style outfit or pyjama-kurta, who would call us "beta", give us the right change, and the bill if we asked for it. And at the grocery store, a man would come with us to the car and deposit our purchases safely in the dicky (this work really cracks up all my foreign friends but i love it! OK, ok, trunk!) or alternatively, deliver it home, especially if they didn't have it in stock at the time. They would always be up to date on inventory and the latest trends and the things that are popular. How do they do it?? Impeccable service, unruffled gentlemen, calm voices, a feeling of security that this store is truly interested in the wellbeing of your home. Chheda at Malabar Hill, Jainsons at Walkeshwar and Wardern Stores and Collection are examples that I'm familiar and truly delighted with (one I can't say about other stores). In fact, it's the AC provision stores like Mega Collection and gang next to the Malabar Hill Club on Malabar Hill that are snobby and a little more curt than the normal fan/air ventilated stores. And there's a difference between being brusque because one has so many customers to handle and acting as if they're doing you a FAVOUR okay!

Which is why, Dr. Monteiro said, Walmart and gang will never be truly welcome in India. They will have fixed hours, (though I remember the Stop-n-Shop near college being open till midnight on weeknights at least), fixed inventories, and will rarely be within easy reach of our homes due to space requirements. If I remember to buy a card or shampoo or craft items on Sunday at noon, why on earth would I want to have my mother drive me 15 minutes away to such a store when my genuine polite Kutchi-bhai is 2 minutes away walking? Not to mention that I'd be back in a flash as well!

Today in the Mumbai Mirror it was written that Mr. Karat, some senior type from the CPI(M) (That Communist Party of India - Marxist) explained to Rahul Gandhi of the Congress at a lunch that Foreign Direct Investment should be prevented at the retail level because it would put many small traders even at the rural level out of business. That's very true I think. I vividly remember feeling sad when I read City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre, in which he wrote about how the invasion of plastic buckets in the slums and villages led to loss of traditional occupation for the kumbhars or potters. Can you imagine? Centuries of family tradition to service a social necessity - bathing and bringing water, wiped out in a fell swoop of cheap lust for brightly coloured plastic buckets. That swing and spill precious water when they get full no less! So these poeple are literally left standing high and dry with no other skill to sustain them! No wonder they must resort to selling their blood for testing and eventually die an ignominous death on the streets, forgotten by those they served for so many years. The fabric of communal life is being rent apart by the wanton invasion of foreign goods.

Okay, I know my sentimentality has no place in the stonecold bloody world that is global political economics, and that it's not always relevant, but I really don't see why we need so many foreign stores here. Goods from East Asia are already cheaper. Mango and Morgan and Aldo coming to India, the invasion of large malls that only create parking and traffic issues have only increased mindless consumption. And they're usually more expensive here than there. They offer unrealistic choices, materials and styles that are not relevant here, culturally or climatically. I'm all for foreign services competing with Indian ones if they are truly superior, as in the case of banks and technology companies as mentioned in the post 2 posts prior to this, but when they don't really offer anything other than some transient novelty, I'm not happy. I don't feel that I have benefitted. Besides, I think clothing/lifestyle stores such as these have managed only to get a slightly larger segment than they would normally get anyway... those that don't have to shell out the extra money for airfare/hotels/miscellaneous expenses abroad to do their annual shopping - though I suppose it all adds up globally. They're cashing in on the desire for bling. Which is fine except that I would like India to remain just slightly real. It's fast becoming a chimera I no longer recognise and hence have become somewhat afraid of.

Also, and most important for me I have never experienced the warmth, the simplicity, the tehzeeb of these baniyawallas in these fancy stores, in which I'm paying Rs. 200 for the half yard of cloth which rips upon second wear, and the Rs. 2000 to 20,000 extra for the 'experience'. The experience: to be surrounded in bleak black and white surroundings which is called 'minimalistic' and 'modern', nominally serviced by bored, judgmental salesgirls, surrounded by other pretentious people, isolated from each other by their pouts. I suppose the intimacy of these crowded shops filled with the bustle of communal needs simply cannot be translated into these wide open spaces in which every man truly does seem to be an island. Let's face it, the world is rapidly becoming a service economy, and once India has gotten over the excitement of pastel colours and own own ideas ripped off and repackaged for a premium, it may wake up and demand more than it has been given. Alternatively, our consumers may remain colonised for a couple of generations more.

:(

Don't change totally India! Don't lose your whicmsicalness and your creative chaos, your infinite ability for contradiction and dynamism and spirit! Wahahah!