There is a reason why the word Shopophobia does not exist in the OED. If there
were people who had a fear of shopping, there would be a word. A bit ridiculous to invent a word for one person. Moi.
Seriously, I would rather have a colonoscopy while a dentist was giving me a root canal. Without anesthesia. Yes. I dread shopping that much. That’s not entirely true. I pretty much hate it as well. So when I was expected to go wedding shopping, you will understand the palpitations and the cold sweat. And that too, to go to India for it. Shoot me now. Spoiler alert! I survived, as can be attested by the date of this article.
Apart from the blue funk, I was the not your 'go-to' person to accompany anyone shopping, least of all my daughter for something so important (unless it was as a coolie to carry their bags). I had not the faintest clue where to begin. Couldn’t tell the difference between a chiffon and a georgette, a lengha from a ghagra, a banarasi from a kanjeevaram, a kundan from a polki. Enamel was what was found on your teeth and not on a minakari necklace.
So there we were, stress-begotten OCIs in hand, ready to take on this gargantuan task.
Alone. For two and a half weeks we maneuvered our way through a maze of recommended designers and shops, in a complex system of ordering invitations, choosing saris, picking up gifts, finding mithai boxes, selecting jewelry, giving measurements to tailors, delivering samples and going to pick stuff up, running from pillar to post and back again - because nothing was ready on time.
The invitations were first. We finished that on Khadilkar Marg in Bombay. A street lined with shops devoted to cards and anything remotely related to it. It took us the whole morning and afternoon, and we left after giving half the deposit and receiving assurances that they would stay on top of the order and stay in touch regularly. Yes, and I also believed the taxi driver when he said he knew where to go and the tailor when he said he had the right measurements.
Even before we left, we had heard horror stories about misspellings and delays, irregular edges and smelly cards ... wrong sizes, wrong fonts, wrong paper. As tempted as we were to go to a gora shop in South Coast Plaza, we realized, apart from the cost, our invitations involved (way) too much fandagiri. We had (way) too many different inserts and (way) too many permutations as regards the invitations, the envelopes, the RSVPs cards etc. Sangeet. Mehndi. Garba. Wedding. Two receptions. And this was supposed to be a low-key wedding. Hah! (The breakfasts, the lunches, the picnic, the pithi, and the high teas were considered non-invitation items.)
There is a happy ending to the Invitation Card story. We have them. They look beautiful. They did smell, but leaving them in my son’s room, spreadeagled on his bed, with the windows open for a week solved that problem. (What was that scream I just heard?) It was painful calling the card guys every night, with them not answering the phone, not replying our emails (who in their right mind uses the excuse “I didn’t get the email” these days? They seriously don’t know how the internet works?) Give them five corrections to do, they would randomly choose three of them.
I don’t know much more about how traumatic everything else was, because the Invitation Task had been delegated to my husband and my daughter. Which was the only reason why I survived. Or rather, the card guys did.
