Sex & Shopping

Back to my favorite topic again! Of course which part is my favorite is something I would let you folks ponder about. Read a survey result recently! Apparently young men think about sex every 52 seconds as against young women who think about shopping every 60 seconds. It also says that ‘Assuming eight hours of sleep a night means shopping trips consume women’s thoughts an astonishing 960 times a day and 6,720 times a week’. Well mercifully such calculations were not made about men thinking of sex.

What is disturbing is that the survey says that 50% of women ( young that too! ) prefer to spend time shopping as against sex. Now this is an issue! The converse if it is true, how can a man have sex without a partner? Just as women simply indulge in what is called as ‘retail therapy’, how can a man indulge in ‘sex therapy’? If you are a woman, you simply walk out of the house, go to the nearest shop and buy something irrespective of whether it is 10.00 pm at Chennai and you are only shopping for haldi. A similar thing can’t happen for a man though. Just imagine you going out in Chennai and walk into a supermarket at 10 pm and look for sex. And if you are a heterosexual, the only one that can probably help you in that therapy is already shopping there for haldi.

What a cruel injustice to men? And on top of it, shopping something is perfectly legal and what men would want to shop becomes illegal. The survey also says that credit crunch doesn’t come in their way of shopping. 62% swipe their credit cards and indulge in what they want to do? And sex is a pure cash transaction and that too advance payment. I don’t think you can swipe cards there atleast here in India. And that is assuming that you only need to pay for it, because normal women prefer shopping to sex anyway.

And it also says that 40% of them are shoe addicts, which means that they keep buying different ones and try them out. Do you have that luxury as a man? World is simply unfair to men. Maybe that is why it makes perfect sense for someone to go shopping along with women thinking that the favor will be repaid immediately. Or just buy shoes and go home everyday. Even that won’t work really! They need to pick it up from the rack, they need to choose. So, when did you get such a luxury? Do you ever pick sex from the rack?

For all the talk about how brains are wired, this is some skew that cannot be accepted. How can you compete with shoes for attention? Unless your face is shaped like that! And that too knowing pretty well that it is a one time passion, because they will buy a different shoe next time! Now I understand why men sometimes have this fetish about shoes Maybe it is not fetish really! It is a well though out strategy or survival instinct. You love shoes and I love sex, better I make love to shoes could be an argument that can pass muster.

So guys, life is tough on us. Pretty tough! If you think you will ever get to indulge in your passion, better go to Shopper’s Stop and sit on a rack. And change to some other place the next day. Otherwise your life is doomed!

WoW

This is something that has taken the fancy of Aruna. Well WoW stands for Women on Wanderlust. These guys, rather gals arrange trips for women alone as a group and pander to the wanderlust wishes of women. She has been goading Krithi to join her and she has already vicariously traveled as far as Egypt now.

Actually it is SOS time for me in reality. On many fronts! I am tempted to find out whether there is a inner meaning for wanderlust. Is it just about visiting places far from the confines of family trappings? Is it wandering away from men in reality? Or wandering towards men in reality, albeit different men! Everyone is bit by wanderlust. Whether it is men or women, that dream is there.

I always wanted to go somewhere on my own. I was wondering what do I go away from or go towards. Maybe the first thing that hits me as a great bonus is that I don’t need to do anything that I normally do. I don’t have to plan, I don’t have to keep timings and I don’t have to look behind my shoulders to do the certain things that I normally do. My beers won’t be counted. And I can practice my belief of using beer as a thirst quencher. Then I need not be worried about what others want to do, whether the kids are hungry etc. Maybe the same stuff applies for women also. Just plainly freak out!

But let’s come back to why I call it as SOS time for me. On two fronts! SOS stands for Sisters on Shopping-lust. That’s what it will be. In fact I have a deep suspicion that it is an alien conspiracy that makes all new launches let be known to these guys exclusively. Even before a shop is conceived to be launched they will come to know of it. It is a different story that the conception itself happens only because the investor is aware of the existence of these two.

If there is 30 minutes that goes by without anything to worry, Aruna will get stressed up. And the next minute she will call Krithi. Asking her to come for a de-stressing trip! And she is always more than ready. My suspicion there is, she would be waiting in her parked car at my gate and the moment the call lands she would be there and before you say Jack Robinson, they both will be out. There is not a single shop whose inventory they don’t know. In fact they get too busy around 31st March, because for stock-taking the shop keepers need to know about the inventory situation and they can’t call anyone else but these two people.

I don’t know what they shop really. But they will keep shopping and sometimes the shopkeepers will beg them to leave because he has a home to go. This could be for themselves or for each other. Alternatively even this can happen. While they are walking in the streets, if they hear the word shopping, they will be stopping. They would probably accompany them. It could be a stranger also; they will just introduce themselves, give them all kinds of dope about where you get what and take them along. The fact that they would end up buying more while they were supposed to play guide is my own sorry story. Let us not dwell into that.

So much so that I have suggested that they can make this as a career. Like what Kamal Haasan says, if your passion is going to be your job too, then there can never be a better life. In the process they can earn some money. I would not mind if it is in kind also. Like getting the n’th pair of sandals as that day’s fee!

Alternatively, they can do one thing as a pair. Krithi can convert her own wardrobe as a shop. Because it has more inventory than the biggest textile showroom! Aruna can then take someone along there and shop. And then having made money out of the sale, they can then go out on a shopping binge themselves. Inventory gets replenished. Money is not wasted. The shopping lust is fulfilled. So many things in a single stroke!

These guys also have some mysterious planning. My daughter Teju is now almost as big as a woman. So when Krithi buys something, to kill her guilt, she shops in the pretext of buying it for Teju. But then she knows she can flick it from her whenever she wants because she can get into the clothes with ease.

Have you ever heard of any guy paying EMI favoring textile shops? Well, I am that guy. This is apart from what they can buy out of their own earnings. There is a strong rumor floating, that one of Krithi’s friends collapsed out of heart attack once because she saw her in a dress that was once seen worn by her 3 years back. It was so unlike her to repeat, so I can understand the shock of her friend. Apparently the grapevine is that Krithi is contemplating to do some construction work at her home, which is to extend the balcony into some kind of a cantilever, because she needs more storage space for her dress. As far as Aruna is concerned there is no such problem. Not because the quantity is less, it is just that she won’t be too worried on where she keeps them.

A third member of the clan is now being indoctrinated that is Teju. What it would be if not for SOS time, when you start wearing slips to office instead of vests!!!