Shopping with Shoplifters

Self-explanatory featured images/titles ruin blogs.

I was at EasyDay today – the store I visit only when I cannot find stuff on BigBasket/ZopNow/at the corner shop that sells Parachute Oil and JimJam cream biscuits, because the queue at their counter kills the last bit of shopping glee. I am not a shopaholic – every time I come across something, I tend to check my bag’s compartment into which I’ve shoved all my notes and coins, my Maestro & metro cards, my Apollo Pharmacy card and Pious Achan’s visiting card, subtracting and summing prices in my tiny brain that slowly shuts down as it plays toils with numbers.

I sift through every shelf, spending a significant amount of time on the Bathing Bars rack to read and compare the prices, making economic decisions and reveling in the grownup-ness of it. I’ve been doing this since I was in Class 12 and I’m not yet sure if there’s anything grownupy about it or maybe I just like reading labels.

Especially creative one-liners like ‘Enjoy the biscuity flavor of this biscuit.’

I whiff at every offer, every Save Rs.5/Buy 1 Get 1 Free, before picking my Laundry Freshener and Shower Gel and Toothpaste and Real/Tropicana and Sugar, because you can’t compromise on other stuff in the grocery list.

So I was near the toothbrush rack when I noticed that a couple next to me had been fiddling with some thing for sometime, considerable whisper exchanges and giggles included. I glanced to see it was condoms. Perhaps they were uncomfortable in a stranger’s presence, who was most certainly only concerned about the 14 rupees she’d be saving by picking a Colgate toothbrush instead of Sensodyne and not with the flavor of the condom they were choosing, but how’d they know that?

Being the considerate co-shopper, I slowly shifted to the Shampoo and Conditioners rack and spent quality time with the tubes and bottles (I’m a very engrossed kinda person, don’t ask me to do things for fun or to wait until a condom-picking couple leaves, I’ll end up doing it seriously), making my way through NEW YEAR BONANZA OFFERS.

Which is when the girl shuffled, and into her jeans’ tight front pocket (the struggle is real) she squeezed what looked like tiny condom sachets and brisked out of the shop, the guy following closely after.

After mindboggling questions of Why would anybody steal condoms which come at like Rs.5 (I’m told, of course), and the more surprising realization of OH YOU CAN ACTUALLY STEAL STUFF HERE, I went back to my modest economics.

Guilty of not reporting the crime I’d witnessed.

Or maybe it was foreplay. I’ll never know.