Indians have had an unspoken rite of passage, one that every young woman or man has participated in at one point or the other. The local stall owner and the bickering we indulge in with them.
Whether it is over the prices of the items we intend to purchase or over a politicians fall from grace, arguments with the local “Anna” at the tea shop or the vegetable vendor is an aunties pass time and one that transcends generation, this “anna” is someone who we all grew up around but somehow blended into the background of the hustle and bustle that surrounded our lives, they debated with our mothers, chatted idly with our fathers and would greet us joyfully with a “Hi, ma.” And if we stopped to look around every once in a while, we might even catch a glimpse of their blinding smiles. It was these moments of quiet that helped forge a sense of fraternity among members of the community. Binding them with a sense of familiarity and forming a small town culture in parts of big cities. This unfortunately has dismantled in the last decade, with the rise of multi-marts.
A one stop destination for all of one’s comforts has become our only Destination.
Super markets and huge shopping marts have created a space where one can find all of their essentials under a single roof and not have to talk to a single soul while doing so. Fixed prices with the occasional sale became enough to suppress our bargaining capabilities and silently make our way through quiet, lit up aisles towards men in neon vests who we might see everyday but don’t greet us with a “Hi” or bargain with our parents. Men who are not called “Anna” or uncle but are actually not addressed at all. We abandon the local “annas” for the ever rotating cycle of cashiers and contribute to the fall of our little village.
It's been a slow and steady decline that has now affected the livelihood of many a shop keeper.
One particularly interesting one that I came across was A. A has been around for as long as I can remember. He sold vegetables in season and occasionally got into an argument with my mom over spinach. Her besting him in the end but one thing I always saw at the end of their interactions was a smile beaming on his face. My mom knew things about him, almost as if they were acquaintances. She knew where his daughter went to school and how early he needed to get up to be here for the morning rush. How far away he lived and what his mother tongue was. He was a likable character from every interaction that I've witnessed. Always witty and charming, with a real knack for bargaining.
He became a part of the scenery almost, a steady reminder of home. Until he wasn't.
“Madam, I can't afford the rent anymore”, he told my mom, justifying his move back to his hometown in Tamil Nadu. And on this particular day that I'd accompanied her he broke the news that he'd be moving at the end of the month. It was a jarring feeling that crept in slowly. It wasn't like I'd had a conversation with A or that I'd ever made any effort to bargain with him but he was someone I'd gotten so used to, someone who, without a doubt came up in the picture if I'd ever been asked to visualize the road leading to my house.
To give you more context the last 5 years had been hard on A, three new multi-marts all boasting a variety of items beyond basic necessities. People now didn't come looking for spinach, they came looking for different kinds of spinach, whether it was red or Malabar. Names that hardly anyone had heard before the influx of Walmart-like stores in our area. A could no longer keep up, he said he could not supply what the people required and thus was no longer the friendly neighborhood competitor for many an aunty or uncle.
This project came around right before A left and scoring an interview with him was hard, even if he'd been shoo'd out by necessity he still held the community close to his heart, still remembered everyone's names and blindly trusted them with tabs. But towards the end he finally had a sit down conversation with me about himself, his life and the way things had changed.
He was born in a small town next to Madhurai and his parents used to visit the neighboring city every day to sell the vegetables they'd procured at a profit. "They believed that people in cities would pay more," he said with a smile. "Funny enough that turned out to be quite the opposite. Those city folks drove a hard bargain."
I asked him how he ended up in Bangalore, to which he said that it had been his wife's idea. They had come to Bangalore with the hope of a better future and better education for their children.
He proclaimed with a smile that his son wanted to become an engineer. I asked him how different the market was 10 years ago. To which he replied with an almost remorseful tone as he said,
"It's such a shame how things have changed, when you were little, people came to us and bought what they had and I knew them all by name, I knew exactly what they'd get regularly and I tried my best to stock up for them. You see that madam," he pointed to a large house adjacent to my apartment."
An old lady used to live there. She came for keerai every Tuesday" he said as if to prove his point.
I finally asked him what, in his view, had changed. That was when the beaming smile I had always associated with him faded from his face. He replied ruefully that it was the people who had changed. Pointing to the new generation, he said, “Neenga la engloda shop varamatenge.” (You people don’t come to our shop anymore—please excuse any spelling errors in Tamil). He referred to the new generation, or the “2k kids” as he called them, as being too "hi-fi"—saying that we seemed too Westernized.
And the interview ended as cryptically as it had begun. He seemed disappointed, yet content with his time here.
Which finally begs the question: why? Why has our generation, in particular, contributed to the decline of mom-and-dad shops? Is it due to our increasing desire for solitude, or simply the pursuit of convenience? Will this truly bring about the end of the ever-present figure of the neighborhood Anna?
Written by
Akshara Krishnamoorthy.
