Bitter Sixteens - Shopping Nightmares

So you are 16 and for some reason you have been experiencing constant growth spurts, well not vertically but laterally, you know what I'm saying, and you really need to get a total wardrobe change, you know what you shouldn't do? Go shopping with your mom, at least not in my family.


For One, they like it cheap, I mean super cheap, say 1 rupee store cheap (yeah i think we have borrowed and replicated most business concepts from the US, Macdonald vada pav burger, eat all you can buffets, Obesity etc. so we definitely can do a 1 rupee store, I mean whats China for. In all fairness, they did copy something from us, they now have the Westernised Modi- you know him by the name Trump)


Two they bargain the crap out of everything, even a safety pin, (that will be 50 paise madam....no I will give you 25 paise...long story short, my mom got the pin for 25 paise, but the waiting charge for the auto came to 50 rupees)


Ok Three, they always go looking for the cheaper store even if it means walking 10kms and in and out of ten stores, and they have the cliched argument when they try to bargain (but the other store sells this for twenty rupees lesser....they offered me a discount...you know my mother has a royal ancestry and shes shes extremely proud of it, makes me wonder if she inherited the bargaining quality from her predecessors, imagine Chandragupta Maurya striking a deal for Indus Valley saying no 500 elephants is too much, I think if I move further north to China I can get the same for 300 cats. Yep, China would have been the cheaper option even then.


Four: They have this unbelievable ability to embarrass the crap out of you. No this isn't just a typical teenage parent generation gap thing I am speaking about. I mean hang me, then chop me up into pieces and burn me degree kind of embarrassment.


So we are at the shop and my mother is looking through delicates for me in spite of my repeated pleas to let me do it on my own. The shop is a busy one and is very crowded. I decide to move away a bit and check out some t-shirts when I hear my mother call out to me 

"Moley (meaning daughter), I turn around and to my horror I see her holding up an unfolded panty stretched to its full size or as we in Kerala love to call it chaddi, shes displaying it to me from across the shop, and I pretend like she's not calling to me and stealthily look away, she keeps calling out my name and I pretend not to hear, she then asks the lady standing next to me and points to me requesting her to call me, now I have to turn around, and she continues, Priya come here, look do you think this will fit you, if it wasn't bad enough that I had all the sales people and other shoppers giggling, she goes ahead and does the measure to fit thing, have you seen how people see if the shirt fits them by lining the shirts shoulders across theirs, well now think chaddi instead of shirt and the obvious counterpart for the same. I pull the panty from her hand and throw it in the heap of clothes in front of me and insist that I don't want panties while grumbling under my breath.


"So are you buying a brassiere", ok brassier as most of you know is the scientific name of a bra, yeah don't know why someone thought they could sophisticate that name with a french undertone, "She's wearing la brassiere, ooh," ooh she must be rich....with hormones, what


Anyway back in Kerala we don't call it a brassiere or bra, we say braysierre, only we can make any English word sound bad (that's how we revolted against the British, we didn't say quit India, we said qut India)


So back to the braysierre, I told mom Im buying it and will deal with the salesgirl directly, she should keep mum, she shook her head a bit disappointed but whatever, so I almost whispered the size I want to the sales girl and I can sense a tension building up in the vicinity, a sort of wind of objection having heard the size, I turn around and glare at her before she says another word, I take a brief look and say its fine and ask her to get me 3 of the same size, and as I move away my mom takes advantage of the situation and strikes up a conversation with the sales girl, these teenagers know nothing and then she picks up the bra, examines the bra cup size, and says to the sales girl, I dont think she needs this cup size, its a bit big, dont you think. Ah let it be, buying one extra size is always better, she wont need a new one for next five years as she will grow into them. Kill me now, please Osama send at least an ATR


Yeah while you all laugh at my misery, I can only say, Im just glad shes not one of those new age fad moms who try so hard to befriend their teenager and also glad Im not a guy, imagine her taking her son to a store and buying him a condom, Oh Durex L, do you think you can fill that in, huh, oh wait look there's a chocolate flavoured one, now is that milk chocolate or pure chocolate, son you dont want to take the risk if your partner is lactose intolerant......