sisyphean shopping experiences: as i saw their first choice, i wept.

27Mar07

when i was in the fourth grade i was on a flight that had imran khan, the super celebrity cricketer on it. this was way back in the eighties when the dude had people swooning just at the sight of him. needless to say, the whole plane was making a fuss. people from the economy class kept coming in to shake his hand, the air hostesses were all flirting like crazy and even the captain came out of the cockpit to meet the celebrated passenger. but the icing on the cake was the black car that came to pick him up, its windows all smeared with lipstick. even at the age of nine i knew that that was way cool. at the time i had little or no idea of what cricket was – a kid in the uae is more attuned to football – and well i was never the sporty type. so i attributed all that public adoration to his long hair.

now i never got the chance to grow my hair that long. my parents would never have stood for it even if the terrible mr. jihad, our headmaster, had allowed such shenanigans but the good thing about the experience was that it led me to read the story of samson which in turn opened up the worlds of greek and roman mythology and later the arabian nights and that tilism-e-hoshruba thing which have remained a source of inspiration to this day. years later an acting teacher at my school in karachi once told me i should ditch my plans for developmental economics and go for scriptwriting. i still think it was the best compliment anyone has ever given me.

anyways, during my readings of tales from greek mythology i came across the story of this bloke named sisyphus. he was a king who had been banished to the underworld with the task of rolling a boulder up a hill for eternity. i bring this up simply because this boulder rolling business came to mind while i was sitting with three other auditors trying to select a saree we had to buy for this female. if there is one thing auditors are not known for its expertise in matters relating to women. women to us are like aliens. mysterious beings, spotted only rarely and worthy of a lot of attention – but beings we don’t know jack about.

so four auditor guys selecting a saree for a woman they’ve never seen is stuff that makes it to the world’s funniest videos. first you argue over whether or not there should be any element of gold in it and it took me at least fifteen minutes to convince them that a desi bride is a bride for at least a couple of years and since shes likely to wear a saree only at weddings and the like, that dash of gold just has to be there. so they ended up choosing something which looked eerily like a dastarkhwan during the two minutes i was on the phone. then they chose one that could have passed for a retard’s repainting of the sri lankan flag. i nearly tore out my remaining hair in desperation. i was waiting to murder the first one who said the peacock print was good but i guess they sensed my mood and we finally moved away from the chiffon rejects to the banarsi silks.

after one hour fifteen minutes and five shop attendants rolling on the floor with laughter, we managed to achieve a consensus on a maroon silk thingy with some gold zari or whatever its called. if it were up to me i would have gone for the soft pastel pink one which would have looked so totally gorgeous on fudge. but then fudge would probably look awesome in the dastarkhwan thingy too…

sigh. badshah salaamat, you’ve got it bad.

Filed under: fashion issues, the sweet stench of life   |  17 Comments