Grocery Shopping

Even though grocery shopping has become a mundane activity after several years, it has had its moments. My memories of grocery shopping start with the small stores (used to be called maLigai kadai, remember?) in our neighborhood in West Mambalam. There were two competing stores, Chitra Stores and Azhagu Sundaram Stores, just a few blocks from one another. Both these stores looked the same. One can't go inside the store and look at any of their products (which seems unbelievable now but was the norm those days), but will have to stand outside the partition and tell the store employee what one wants. And then, he would weigh the 1-kg of toor dal, using a manual weighing scale, and wrap it in one of the old newspaper sheets. You had no idea if what you got was really 1-kg (and sometimes you doubted that some stores were cheating), but you just pay for the stuff you bought at the gallaa (counter, which is where the owner sat and observed all the happenings), and carry the paper packet home. The other thing I remember about these stores is the smell, which was an amalgamation of a lot of the cooking ingredients. Although both the stores were very similar in price, products and service, my dad prefered Chitra stores as he was friends with the owner. So we always shopped there, and Mr. Azhagu Sundaram knew that. One day I went to Sundaram's as Chitra Stores had not opened yet, and he gave me a hard time about our family not shopping at his store. I even thought that he may send me away without giving me that one ingredient my mom wanted for her cooking, but he is a smart businessman and would never turn away business. Since my mom did not buy groceries ahead of time, she would realize in the midst of her cooking that we don't have enough salt, and so either me or my dad will have to get it right away. Most of the times it would be me and I liked it as I would get some tips (usually 5 or 10 paisa, but still) when I brought the change back. These were the days when I went to high school. Then I went off to Coimbatore (from Chennai) to do my bachelor's degree and so did not have to do grocery shopping there.

And then I came to the US and started living in an apartment with roommates and I had to do grocery shopping. None of my roommates (nor me) had a car in the small town of Kingsville, TX, that I lived in for about six months. So one of my roommates' friends would bring his car around on friday nights (dating was not a popular concept amongst us!) and we would all go to the nearby HEB to buy our groceries. Because of the tight budget and the friend's time, we would buy only the necessary things (we would need all the roommates' buy-in as we just divided the total amount into five) and a few unnecessary ones. One such unnecessary thing was the Baker's Dozen doughnuts (HEB gives you 13!) and we always get that. Grocery shopping was just a weekly event then as none of us were very close and we did not have much money to spend.

Then I moved to Louisville, KY where I didn't have a car but got better friends. Soon after I went to Louisville, one of my department colleagues offered to take me shopping to get some household stuff. He comes driving in this boat sized car that impressed me a lot. When I got in the car, he asked me what all I needed to get. That was all I needed to bring out my list. He wasn't thrilled that my shopping list was so long but still didn't say anything but took me along. That was my lesson to let people know in advance what I wanted from them, be it time or something else.

Once I made some friends, once-a-week grocery shopping became a social event. We would all meet at one person's house and have dinner and then go to the neighboring state of Indiana as there was a store called Bigg's there, that we liked. Again, this happened mostly during friday evenings, even though some of us (ahem ahem) had started dating by then. I used to like these times as it was a good way of bonding and exchanging ideas about cooking and groceries and other things.

Tom Petty reminds me of another grocery shopping adventure. One of our friends drove two of us to Bigg's (where else) one evening and we got delayed for some reason. So we got our groceries and then got pizza and Killian's Irish Red and came to my place. We played Tom Petty and had dinner and just talked about stuff. It was nothing special but still lingers in my heart, for some reason.

And then, of course, there were times when I could not find anybody to give me a ride and so walked to the nearby Kroger. At these times, I buy only necessary things but since milk is one necessity, it was hard and heavy while coming back. But this didn't happen very often.

Now of course, I have a car and can buy groceries anytime anywhere, without having to worry about whom should I ask this time or how heavy the bags will be. But I still fondly remember those days when grocery shopping was a social event.