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Guest Column by Shunali Khullar Shroff: Price & privilege
T here’s something going on that should be deeply concerning to us as humans
T here’s something going on that should be deeply concerning to us as humans. The world is going to pieces, and we can’t stop ordering that new shade of lipstick, the velvet mule, that Turkish lamp, the pure ghee mithai, the striped kurta and the floral saree online. The apocalypse would be upon us, and we’d still be feverishly swiping our cards online for something that we didn’t know we needed until the ad popped up on our social media feeds.
The India I grew up in, didn’t make it easy for its people to buy too much. Contentment came easy because the culture of compulsive shopping didn’t exist nor did the opportunity. Then, shopping malls opened and international brands dropped anchor, and we moved past the era of not having anything to suddenly having too many choices. As more and more brands arrived in India, introducing us to the concept of seasons in shopping, we became true pupils of the school of materialism, now buying fashion for the latest season, even when some of us inhabited cities like Mumbai that have, well, only two seasons.
Thankfully, Ikea came to India just in time offering us instant storage solutions for all the things we were compulsively buying. So, now not only were people buying things, they were also buying things to keep the things they had bought in. By the time online shopping was introduced to us, we’d mastered the art of acquisition. Today, it seems people just can’t get enough of things to buy.
The opposite of happy
Our parents’ generation grew up experiencing the simpler joys of life and for some part of our lives we experienced it as well. We looked forward to birthday and Christmas presents because our toy trunks and closets weren’t bursting at the seams with our possessions. Sadly, the generation of plenty will never know the joy of receiving. And the instant gratification of shopping has taken away their ability to appreciate moments of pleasure that material things can never give.
Not only does over consumerism not make us happier on evidence, it also has catastrophic consequences for the planet. While some brands are working towards sustainability actively, for most of them, it is merely a sales pitch. Encouraging us to buy biodegradable clothes every season isn’t sustainable. What is sustainable is urging us to reuse what we already have and buy only when a justifiable need for something new arises.
Shopping as an escape will only plunge us and the planet into a greater turmoil. The dictionary defines escape as breaking free from confinement and control. But this escape into reckless materialism isn’t liberating us from anything. If anything, we’re being controlled by the ones who profit from it.
Shunali Khullar Shroff is a Mumbai-based writer. Her last book was Love in the Time of Affluenza
I Say Chaps is a column that allows passionate, creative people a platform to have their say.
From HT Brunch, January 7, 2023
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