Saturday, December 13, 2003

4: Consumerism and Wrapping woes
As a continuation (of what my mother reminded me) of a tradition followed by my grandfather, we started to wrap the new books in fresh paper jackets. We fished out some exquisite handmade paper and began wrapping the books, only to realise that the books that now looked like neat little-schoolboys-in-the-morning, would, after a couple of reads look like dirty little brats, especially their nice handmade-paper jackets. I went out to buys some plastic wrapping sheets. As luck would have it, not a single stationery store in the vicinity had any (neither the stuff nor the staff with intelligence enough to understand what I wanted). I even paid a visit to a supermarket, in vain. Finally a store stocked the exact variety, with the exact transparency and the exact thickness; just that they called by some weird name and not �plastic wrapping sheet�. After a brief struggle to locate it, the store hand told me that I could only buy it in meters: I had wanted one and a half. OK! No problem! After all, this is not exactly going to rot if not used. But on closer inspection, I found the sheets to be damaged. As these things came in tubular rolls, I told the guy to get me two meters from a scratch-free mid section of the bundle. The fellow was taken aback. How could I have demanded that he waste a couple of feet from the free end of the roll? I told him that it was none of my business that he was not gonna sell those damaged parts, and I could never buy sheets that did not serve the purpose. He refused to oblige me by saying some cock and bull stories about it not being viable to cut out a mid section. I was about to argue about why I need to pay for his careless storage when I realised why the bundle was so damaged in the first place: with this kind of attitude, he couldn�t have sold an inch of that thing to any self-respecting patron. I quickly walked out and walked quite a distance to an old store. One I used to frequent as a kid, but later gave up on, because there were other new stores much closer. As I walked in, the old man (who in all my waking memory has always remained as old) who assists in the store, joyfully whooped on seeing me after all these years. After a weak smile and making up an excuse of �too much studies�, for not visiting his store for so long, I told him I needed plastic book wrapping. It was his turn to smile a wry smile. He knew exactly what I wanted without me having to explain, but he had just run out of stock.
I half angrily stomped home while my temper clock reminded me that I needed dinner. Luckily, we were able to improvise with some plastic card pouches, that when cut open and secured with tape, served the wrapping purpose fairly well: an excusable compromise. Work done, eaten, blogged... time for Kurosawa, Cimino, Peckinpah, Kieslowski, Joffe and co. to start working on me.

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