another travelogue !!!

Things are never quite the same once the festive season thing sets in. Its sort of an infection that’s gets you once you are actually out there on the streets or have your earphones plugged in listening to the radio station playing the same song perhaps for the seventh time of the day.
Anyway I will not beat around the bush. Poila boisakh is a reminder for me that I have to wear the semi-cotton “Punjabi” bought by my mother from “puri” a sea shore city known to all devotees round the globe for temples, to foreigners for local narcotics and to my mother and all other humans of her kind for garments that are not produced anywhere near the town, but which the oriya tradesmen make the Bengali understand so very easily. A pity that COMMON SENSE CAN BE SO UNCOMMON.
Anyway I have put that good for nothing out of fashion thing for two years now and hoped by the this boisakh it would grow too short for me, but I completely forgot that the some garments are evil, they just grow with you.
So excuses aside I finally decided that I would go shopping something I had never done before! I gathered my guts and put together my funds and was on a bus. Now here I wanna seriously say that the fm stations are doing more well than the wireless communications between policemen in kolkata coz the other day I overheard a local sergent saying central avenue was totally blocked and the control room did not know anything about it.
I almost dropped the bus fare I was reaching out to the grumpy conductor with weary eyes smelling of sun and leather, when I heard a mall declaring a whopping 65% off!
I was confused over what reaction I should be having. Should I say “WOW”…but I preferred “WHY?”.
Hmmm…………..I pondered… maybe the owner was heading for a clean and calm life far from the cosmopolitan and by that pledge he probably took some distant days in his schooldays of serving fellow Indians… he was simply fulfilling his oath. What a man of honour he should be…
But the old man dozing in the empty ladies seat evoked sinister thoughts within me… may he was a lying cheat, a shady character, long black over coats… black hats, cigar………..
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By now the bus was well stuck in a jam near Deshopriyo park and the long queue of cars ahead of us indicated it was more than signal lights playing pranks! Was there an demonstration round?
The footpaths claimed attention! People jostled around! Aunties with their daughters ahead of them, keeping a tight vigil on her movements and an open ear for the best bargain shot at random decibels from the shopkeepers who claimed they were all serving humanity and themselves selling out on loss, and wanted the world to rob them blank.
An occasional street smart. A roadside Romeo with sneaky eyes and an occasional complement for the appropriate……… unexpressed!
I was getting the feel of the whole situation when the bus suddenly lurched ahead…
Finally I reached the mall…. I got in and grew eternally confused. There was multiple choices and I knew only how to deal with four. The jeans looked all the same and yet they had different tags.
The eternal pressure of choice kept building up on me. And I could not possibly decide. I picked up a shirt only to find out it was way above my budget! The best thing was the girls were too quick in this art of shopping.. they just knew what to do, and what to buy.. like it was all in their genes!
I seemed lost in this maze and things potentially looked dangerous when I heard someone say
“ Excuse me sir, may I help you?’
“ Umm…which way is the exit?” I asked
“ Take the right alley” was the perplexed answer.