I shop, You Shop, We shop- this is Festive Time

                           I shop, You Shop, We shop- this is Festive Time

The festival season in India is now in full swing. It started early this year with Janmashtami, followed by Ganesh Chaturti and two weeks later by Navratri and Dussehra to culminate in Diwali a fortnight from to date. Apart from the celebration of the festivals, this period is also noted for a number of holidays with weekends prefixed and suffixed, reducing the working days in a year at least by a minimum of fifteen days. It also marks the slow exit of summer and the gradual setting in of autumn with a nip in the air.

For a nation steeped in observance of tradition, these festivals provide a much needed interlude from the dull, mundane and prosaic existence for a majority of our population – something to look for, something exciting to eat, dress, shop and enjoy, even if it punctures a fairly big hole in one’s pocket. There is certainly an air of gaiety and buoyancy adding to the nip in the air that mutes the cry of all the work alcoholics and spoilsports who seek a halt to the festivities citing the loss of man-days and of all others who oppose them in their justified rationale of causing noise and atmospheric pollution.

 But the notable aspect of the festive season is the flash of advertisements on the opening pages of a newspaper. The newspaper that quotes 46 or 52 pages in its daily editions starts the news with page one after devoting the first six unnumbered pages to advertisement from eats to electronics, prams to baby beds,  blankets to comforters, hosiery to linens, jewelry to silverware, sarees and dresses, cars to utility vehicles, utensils to kitchenware, bracelets to cufflinks- products of all kind, for all genders, and for all ages.  The newspapers certainly thrive on these special festivals with attractive offers  that play hide and seek with the customers showing only the slashed price and not the jacked up prices  that provide a huge margin of profit to the traders and manufacturers. The shining velvety smooth papers that print these advertisements add lustre to the products advertised, enticing the innocent customer either to drive down to the shops or order online irrespective of his needs or requirements.  The roads are choc-o-block with cars of all sizes and shapes, the chauffeur driven swanky beauties (for further enhancement of the status symbol) and the owner driven low key vehicles, the creaky buses and the doddering three wheelers, the zipping bikes and the staid scooters all jostling cheek by jowl bring the traffic almost to a dead halt. Nothing deters the single minded consumers in search of the elusive market that offers quality products at throw away prices.  The young and the old , men and women, children and GPs(grand parents) holding to their parental and filial anchors fill the streets where  on either side stand vendors, hawkers, mehendiwallas  nee artists, balloon sellers, chaatwalas with golgappas so that not a fraction of an inch of space is available to move. How the crowd shops, how it returns home is indeed is both a mystery and miracle. The din and the noise pierce the ear drums and no one listens to the shrill cries that emanate from different sides. The festival frenzy can be best summed up as the Shape of Chaos.

 All this brings to my mind the question, ‘is it worth all the money and effort to go on a shopping frenzy as an annual ritual of paying homage to festivals and  to the Gods  in whose name they are celebrated? I am not a rationalist (lynchers and killers, please take note) nor am I an atheist nor am I a sadist as though I frown upon these activities. But the honest question is can happiness be bought in the shops?  Can wading through the crowd provide heroic excitement? Can the cacophony sound sweet and melodious?  Can consuming the adulterated sweets and the dust covered golgappas give unalloyed gastronomical pleasure? Does this mad hopping from shop to shop provide relief from the dull monotony of everyday routine? Does the hole in the purse empty the passion for possession of things that are often beyond one’s reach? Is there another way of sharing the joys of the festivals without the hustle and bustle of malls and shopping centres, leave aside the crowded markets?  Have we not mistakenly equated progress and development with consumerism? If the festival is an occasion to go for new things, are we ready to discard the old things- whether they are old shoes and slippers, old bedsheets and bed covers, worn out jeans and shirts, sarees, coats and trousers, old vessels and crockery? No we add new one and the old ones pile up as junk in the house. Tolstoy’s short story How much land does a man need is now a forgotten story. Sixty years back the French playwright Eugene Ionesco wrote a short play The New Tenant about a man overwhelmed by objects—“stifled in a sea of inert matter.” A new tenant moves into his house;  with him he moves his furniture. More and more furniture comes in. And still more. Finally there is a complete wall of furniture around the tenant, and when the last piece is crammed in, he is happily alone in his new room, hemmed in by furniture. The play ends when from the depths, a disembodied voice asks someone to turn out the lights. Ionesco has captured the modern life with its greed for materialism and the vanity and overwhelming nature of an acquisitive consumerist world. What we see today is an advertisement for acquisition with no awareness of  those who have only the open sky and the begging bowl as their possessions.  

It has become the fashionable groan these days – TINA. When there is no alternative let us at least enjoy if we have the power to purchase pleasure.  But , sorry,it is not all TINA. While everyone is inspired today to talk of a new Bharat, an Ujjawal Bharat, a Swachcha Bharat, a Sunehri bharat etc, in my feeble old voice, I like to raise a Gandhi’s Bharat with Gandhiji’s motto of Waste not, Want not.

We are in the 21^st century, coming nearly a century after Gandhi had demonstrated his credo by living a life of simplicity that catered to the minimal needs for a happy and satisfied life.  No doubt, this is the age of technology and not the age of charka, the spinning wheel. But the core essence of the charka has gone out along with the charka. The charka with its circular movement symbolizes the eternal movement of life and its spindles moving along with it, up and down, vertically and horizontally are thus assured of equal sharing of all that life offers. We have replaced charka by a more mechanized and easily operable wheel. Technology has its role well marked out to ease our daily grind. But it cannot be a substitute for the core meaning of charka. The word itself is from Sanskrit and means wheels that spin energy forces that are evenly distributed to one and all. Charka system has a direct connection to our physical, emotional, and spiritual well being and understanding its functions can help us respond to life with awareness. We need an awareness of charka as much as we need to harness technology for a better life.

There can be no TINA factor to bring a new Bharat if we learn to harness consumerism to sharing it with our fellow beings  in particular the weaker sections of our society. Festivals are best enjoyed in a shared society where the haves are less greedy and more generous and the have -nots have less to despair and more to receive.

I shop, you shop and we shop- for me, for you, for us and for them.