BENGALURU: Sale season has come around again, and malls and stores are literally screaming from the hoardings – clothes, gadgets, appliances, home decor, all on discount. Tempting, teasing, seducing, but it’s no go. You resolutely turn away from the blandishments, and continue on your way. This is the year of the corona curse, and there’s precious little in the purse. Even window shopping can be counted as an indulgence. And if triumphing over these temptations is not enough, there are mailers and vouchers in your inbox, and messages pop up about deals and offers. Some are peppered with dollar-eyed emojis, for effect.
Then there are the holiday clubs and cruises, with tantalising visuals of seas and beaches and mountains, jumping out of your mailbox. But sigh!, holidays are now history, no planning, booking, packing in the near future.For where’s the loot, the bucks, the greenbacks (pink, and multi colours in our case), the grease that keeps the economy oiled and running? Last year this time, sales would have prompted a consumerist splurge, but today malls echo with emptiness, the mall rats having long deserted them. And the rest have become penny-wise.
Six months into the pandemic, and the psyche of the average Joe and Janaki have undergone a sea change. Shrinking incomes and insecurity have turned them into scrimpers and savers, as they keep their purse strings firmly tied. Quite unconsciously, we are adopting the lifestyle of our parents, who put aside every spare rupee for that distant rainy day. Theirs was a spartan outlook: spend on good food and education, shopping was restricted to festivals and birthdays, holidays in ajji mane, and everything else was luxury. We are pretty close to this too, as we turn Scrooge-like to survive the pandemic. Cutting back and doing without have acquired the status of virtue, and don’t be surprised to find a little pot of cash tucked away in a dark corner of kitchens, for the day when we are called upon to prove our atma nirbharta.
Fear remains the overriding factor, the fear of loss — of jobs, salaries, savings, homes, health. As one colleague put it aptly, this is a pandemic of fear. No doubt it’s psychologists who are going to have a field day sometime in the future, but that’s if we can afford them.But in the midst of all this gloom-doom, there are our reckless Scarletts who dismiss our mousy fears. Tomorrow is another day, they say airily, kal kisne dekha hai… Let’s shop, party and dance all night. Hasn’t Covid taught you to grab life with both hands and live for today, the here and now? Maybe there is some truth in that too.