Stay with me on this one. If you aren’t a graduate student living away from home, visiting maybe once every year or every couple of years it might be tough to do so. But do try. I’ll give you a cookie if you are sincere about it.
Visiting home is always wonderful. But there is a slight problem. What do you buy for the folks back home? If you aren’t an experienced shopper like me, it can be rather traumatic. I treat my shopping like a hostage rescue operation. Get in. Liberate the hostages. And get out as fast as possible. I usually can mange to escape without too many things attaching themselves to my person. Occasionally, I might have to run the gauntlet of over eager sales people trying to unload on me, but I usually manage to escape with some very adroit maneuvering. Only once have I been caught when a lady sprayed what I think was mace into my face and paralyzed me.
However, that is beside the point. I’m talking about a particular subset of shopping, “The week before I leave for India” shopping. When I visited I got lucky. I managed to have my folks give me a list of what they wanted and I did not mess that up too badly. However, everything I bought out of my own initiative was pretty much a disaster. I won’t go into the details. Let’s just say that my parents were very amused. And rather insultingly, not in the least bit surprised.
One thing that used to be a sure shot were chocolates. Under our previous socialist regime, Indians were denied the horrible capitalist influence of imported chocolates. So if you brought home chocolates by the gallon/kilogram/bushel, you were welcomed home with open arms. Relatives would drop by and you could dump chocolates upon them as you polished your halo of “Ability to shop well.”
Knowing this, I bought chocolates by the gallon/kilogram/bushel when I visited last year. A smart move I thought to myself. You can’t go wrong with chocolates. “Huzzah”, I cheered in the silence of my head. (My head is mostly filled with assorted people from an Elizabethan Black Adder episode. But that is a story for some other time).
Unfortunately I had huzzahed too soon. The universe in its infinite wisdom had decided that fucking me over was a good idea and so proceeded to do so with distasteful alacrity and an enthusiasm that horrified me.
The government had decided that imported chocolates were no longer a menace. (The Swiss had stopped their misadventures on our southern borders. No longer was cheese thrown at unsuspecting fishermen out at sea, and no longer were…that’s all I know about the Swiss. So let assume that the Swiss had stopped doing that typical annoying Swiss thing which I’m too lazy to look up.) The aisles of the supermarkets were bursting with chocolate of all races, brown, black and white. Some of them had nuts and…Must resist urge to make dirty joke…and some were triangular. So when I landed at home with my proud consignment, people took one look at it and said “Pshaw”. They turned their noses up at my bourgeoisie chocolates and mocked me in public. (Yodeling!!! The Swiss had stopped yodeling in the south). So that was bad. And I have a bit of a sweet tooth. So I ate most of the chocolates instead of giving them to the people who hadn’t mocked me. (Sorry grandma. Really.)
Well, the point of all this is that, I still haven’t figured out why a certain person is taking home two packets of Doritos. Two LARGE packets of Doritos. You know who you are.
(Told you I was going to blog about it. [Insert Evil laughter here])
