Showing posts with label recession thank you birthday style life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recession thank you birthday style life. Show all posts

Jul 22, 2009

Less Style More Life Guru

Thank you dear recession for giving us back the good old days.
Published in Big Hyderabad, July 2009

Dear Recession!You are a stranger to us. We haven’t known each other for too long, have we? Just at the beginning of last year, when we were all having pipe dreams about owning farm houses on the Vikarabad highway and moving into gated communities on the Warangal highway, we were introduced to you. Recession, they said, had hit us. The word, incidentally, rhymes with repercussions. That’s not a nice word at all. A word my boss uses when I go wrong and he asks me with a nasty face whether I know of the ‘repercussions’ of my actions!
Till last year, it was Thank God It’s Friday. This year, the line is ‘Oh God, it’s the month end again’. Lifestyle split into two words. Style flew out of the window and life remained. Birthdays meant the office sponsoring a lunch at a place where they ask you ‘mineral’ or ‘regular’. We used to choose the former. Celebrations meant gifts and return gifts for all. A wedding anniversary was about a booze and snooze party at a friend’s farmhouse where he would sponsor the eats. A holiday meant buying expensive souvenirs without haggling for it. Salary was roughly divided into EMIs, Credit Card payments and since there was nothing much left, it again meant applying for fresh loans and paying through credit cards. Saving was a word that we associated with washing powder ads where they talk about saving Rs 3 on every packet of washing powder. All that before we met you!
Now, we celebrate birthdays at home and pass on a box of Kaju Barfi (Rs 400 a kilo, sob sob) and get free online cards into the email inboxes from friends. Clothes for the birthday meant giving a gift from an old granny to the good old tailor and get it done a day before the D-day. Where have those days of walking past malls, trying out clothes in changing rooms and coming up to show off the loot. But I guess, it’s not so bad after all. At least, we now spend just one-tenth of what we used to, a year ago.
Designer clothes have given way to tailor-made ones. Expensive Sunday afternoon lunches have been replaced with a chat session in the street corner. The car sits decked up in the parking slot with a gleaming silver nylon cover on it as two-wheelers with maha mileage and fuel savings move us around. Holidays meant flying off to crowded destinations and blowing up a few hundred thousands for a weekend. Now, it’s a quick drive on the weekend, preferably to a pilgrim place where we can ask God to send recession packing away. Weekends used to be a trip to the resort telling friends and folks we are not available. Now, it’s a potluck lunch over a game of Rummy and scrabble and cups of hot masala chai. Trips to the malls have plummeted and visits to parents, chachas and maasis have grown.
Yes, we don’t have much style left. It is about living grassroots and spending only on what we need. But thank you dear recession! It is because of you that we have less style, more life guru!