I have just one rule when it comes to shopping, especially boring grocery shopping - keep it as simple as possible! If the veggies are neatly washed and bound into pre-measured packages, that works for m. If they're chopped up and ready to cook, even better. If they're pre-cooked, awesome! I go to only all-under-one-roof supermarkets even if the prices are said to go through said roof.
Contrast that with an aunt of mine who has perfected the fine art of frugal shopping. She and her friends know exactly where one can buy tamarind and rice and various dals for only half the normal price. There are a few catches to this miracle of economics of course. One, you have to visit several parts of the next state to get the stuff and two, you have to buy enough to feed half the country.
No problem, they have a system that will put the most sophisticated of SAP systems to shame. They set a date when all the aunties are relatively free, then hire a van, conscript a set of volunteers who will share the loot, pack an array of gunny bags, and set off on their expedition. After a day of going from Tamarind Town to Coconut County to Vegetable Valley, they divide the stuff and its cost into halves, quarters, eighths and sixteenths, depending on the pre-planned number of takers for each item. They divide the cost of the van as well as the tip for the driver equally by the number of people, and add the cost of the tender cocunt water that they bought en route (taking care to subtract it from the share of the aunty who declined thanks to her unpredictable bladder). All financial transactions completed, it's up to each aunty to decide how to transport her share up to her home (or whether she prefers to build a new apartment around the sacks in the basement since that seems to be easier at the moment).
Once the sacks are all in the house somehow, they have to be sun-dried to fend off various zoological specimen that threaten to march in. So out to the balcony they go where through weeks of poojas and chanting, the aunties have already made an airtight agreement with God so that it will not rain for the next few hours.
Now to make space for all the stuff, the kitchen and pantry have to be completely cleaned out, during the course of which several long-lost treasures are re-discovered - some ancient spare parts of a mixie used by an ancestor long since gone and some blades of a fan that nobody recalls. Obviously these priceless possessions cannot be thrown out and new equally loving homes have to be found for them. Finally after a week of planning, designing, and implementing, the groceries are all in place.
No wonder the meals we have in my aunt's place are so much more evocative than the ones in mine. Each chilly, each seed of mustard, each grain of rice has a story to tell.
And it isn't just the vegetables and the pulses and rice either. A bottle of mango pickle demanded by one aunt in Bangalore from another in Chennai makes its tortuous way from Chennai to Delhi to Gujarat to Mumbai to Kerala and finally to Bangalore carried by various aunts-in-law, cousins twice removed, friends of friends, and strangers on buses, trains, taxis, and bullock carts. Fortunately the pickle is made to last for all eternity and is packed so tightly that even airport scanners can't get a glimpse of what's inside. One lick of that pickle and you can tell that it is a pickle of character, one that has seen life, unlike the insipid ones that I buy from my all-under-one-roof supermarkets with the fancy nutritional labels on them, the bottles that have seen nothing but the inside of the factory and the warehouse.
Note: To protect her privacy, pulses, and pickles, I have left my 'aunt' unnamed.
Contrast that with an aunt of mine who has perfected the fine art of frugal shopping. She and her friends know exactly where one can buy tamarind and rice and various dals for only half the normal price. There are a few catches to this miracle of economics of course. One, you have to visit several parts of the next state to get the stuff and two, you have to buy enough to feed half the country.
No problem, they have a system that will put the most sophisticated of SAP systems to shame. They set a date when all the aunties are relatively free, then hire a van, conscript a set of volunteers who will share the loot, pack an array of gunny bags, and set off on their expedition. After a day of going from Tamarind Town to Coconut County to Vegetable Valley, they divide the stuff and its cost into halves, quarters, eighths and sixteenths, depending on the pre-planned number of takers for each item. They divide the cost of the van as well as the tip for the driver equally by the number of people, and add the cost of the tender cocunt water that they bought en route (taking care to subtract it from the share of the aunty who declined thanks to her unpredictable bladder). All financial transactions completed, it's up to each aunty to decide how to transport her share up to her home (or whether she prefers to build a new apartment around the sacks in the basement since that seems to be easier at the moment).
Once the sacks are all in the house somehow, they have to be sun-dried to fend off various zoological specimen that threaten to march in. So out to the balcony they go where through weeks of poojas and chanting, the aunties have already made an airtight agreement with God so that it will not rain for the next few hours.
Now to make space for all the stuff, the kitchen and pantry have to be completely cleaned out, during the course of which several long-lost treasures are re-discovered - some ancient spare parts of a mixie used by an ancestor long since gone and some blades of a fan that nobody recalls. Obviously these priceless possessions cannot be thrown out and new equally loving homes have to be found for them. Finally after a week of planning, designing, and implementing, the groceries are all in place.
No wonder the meals we have in my aunt's place are so much more evocative than the ones in mine. Each chilly, each seed of mustard, each grain of rice has a story to tell.
And it isn't just the vegetables and the pulses and rice either. A bottle of mango pickle demanded by one aunt in Bangalore from another in Chennai makes its tortuous way from Chennai to Delhi to Gujarat to Mumbai to Kerala and finally to Bangalore carried by various aunts-in-law, cousins twice removed, friends of friends, and strangers on buses, trains, taxis, and bullock carts. Fortunately the pickle is made to last for all eternity and is packed so tightly that even airport scanners can't get a glimpse of what's inside. One lick of that pickle and you can tell that it is a pickle of character, one that has seen life, unlike the insipid ones that I buy from my all-under-one-roof supermarkets with the fancy nutritional labels on them, the bottles that have seen nothing but the inside of the factory and the warehouse.
Note: To protect her privacy, pulses, and pickles, I have left my 'aunt' unnamed.
was it an aunt or a certain unnamed relative who I take after as well :) Oh the joy of going to dirty markets and picking out fresh and dirty produce :)
ReplyDeleteOne cant beat the aroma/character of the groceries acquired so tactfully by the aunts. So well put, I can even smell it! :)
ReplyDeleteI would surely like have a lot of lessons from your aunt.Excellent.
ReplyDeleteThanks all - the "aunt" in question took it really well - I am blessed with a family that has a sense of humour!
ReplyDeleteWhat a delightful read. I will think of this each time I eat at my pati's home!
ReplyDelete