Buying groceries was once a chore driven by necessity rather than desire, an experience my sister and I found so tedious, so boring as children that we teared up and wailed at the mention of D-Mart, dreaded Sunday evenings to be spent at the supermarket. Before turning 10, we struck a deal with our parents: they agreed to drop us off at the Crossword next door, where we, on our part, agreed to read in pin-drop silence, speaking with no strangers until Mamma and Papa returned, groceries magically replenished.
If they had a glimpse into their futures, these little girls would’ve been dumbstruck. In 2026—already dubbed the Year of Analogue—there is nothing dreamier to me than strolling through the aisles of a supermarket. The dazzling colours, the bright lights, the cheese fridge… are these any less magical than the characters I read about in the Enid Blyton stories I once leafed through at Crossword? Through my rose-tinted glasses, memories of D-Mart appear softer: my sister and I squeezed into trolleys wheeled around by my parents, yapping non-stop, picking out snacks; on lucky days, being allowed to purchase exactly one toy. “I need to romanticise my life to be able to live it, which is a lot of what I did when I first moved to Mumbai,” reminisces 25-year-old Gauri Mahajan. “I felt so new to everything in the city and craved familiarity, to see the same faces and feel more connected to my immediate surroundings. That is when I started enjoying shopping for vegetables and groceries across the road.” Now working in Bengaluru as an administrator, they still look forward to their weekend grocery runs. “On the way there, I have found a fig tree that I always inspect for ripe fruit, a flower shop I sometimes stop by and my new favourite dosa batter shop. My flatmate and I always say hi to our neighbour’s dog, Coco.” Their weekly ritual means they are more in tune with the passage of time and seasons: “Especially with the transition of the first mangoes of the year, then the whole market being flooded with mangoes.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: vogue.in
