Bombay Diaries : Shopping

Source: Google Images

Shopping. Please imagine this word in bright blue neon light bulbs and imagine its dazzled effect on the objects lying around it. That exactly would also be a woman’s response to this term. Even if a family has gone out on a holiday, the lady of the house will have one whole day kept separately to raid the local markets. If you go by her logic, you always find new things at new places, right? 


So, here I am, in the city where fashion is born. Mumbai. Or I’d simply stick to Bombay. The word Bombay has such a crisp feel to it. So, it was a Sunday and I had no plans of wasting that day at my flat. And what could be a better way to consume the whole day than shopping? Hence I took off with a friend of mine, another girl, and off we went to the streets. 

The streets we wanted to attack were Linking Road and Hill Road. The former one in Khar and the latter in Bandra. Both of them are very close to each other.By the way, I have an application in my phone called the m-indicator which gives me all the info about the buses and trains of Bombay one needs to catch to reach from one point to another. So I keep using it to track down the right buses and trains. That makes me feel confident if nothing else. Hence I generated a list of buses which would take us from my current spot to Khar and off we went.

The bus journey was pretty comfortable for the day being a Sunday and hence not many people travelling. We got down at Linking Road and started scrounging. After spending some time roaming about, we started for Hill Road. It is about a 10 minute walk from Linking Road. And once we got there did we actually realize what street shopping really is. There were stalls spilling on the pavements and that too on both sides of the roads. There were shops at every nook and corner, some supported by tree branches or sometimes just a rod between two poles. And trust me, it wasn’t that comfortable walking in the sun either. But then a little vitamin D hasn’t hurt anybody right? 

The most ironical thing was that these shops were selling identical stuff that you could buy from a big high priced outlet at half the price or sometimes even lower than that. These street clothes are basically the clothes rejected by the big showrooms because of some minor hitch in the making of the product. But we, the lesser mortals couldn’t care much. If you can get a good quality t-shirt for 110 bucks, why would you even want to think twice?

I got two shirts, 1 t-shirt and 2 foot wears for a total of 880 bucks. And this was only the first trip. And I am going to make sure that I keep making such trips. Or at least till my dad keeps transferring the money to my account. So, all the ladies who’ve been sitting at home on Sundays, get up and invade all the local street markets of your city. It is hell lot of fun and easy on the pocket too. Just one FYI, always be super careful about your wallet and your phone. You never know who picks your pocket and a happy trip might just be remembered for all the wrong reasons. Other than that, shop till you drop.

~Supriya Jain