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The Real Shop – Online or Offline ?
Today, every family has the luxury of online shopping. How wonderful it is, to ponder over your desired goods virtually, scroll down and compare if you wish, and then finally to fulfil one’s own temptations or needs, just click once more and place your order online ! Within few days or even moments of yearning and awaiting , you have your order delivered at your doorstep, and bravo! You have just saved the struggle of drooling in unending traffic and narrow lanes to reach your dear shop ! Online shopping has created wonders- from getting groceries to fresh veggies and meat, to getting dazzling apparels and basic electronics- the world is now on our fingers. Furthermore, during difficult times like now, online shopping has just made the situation calmer and easier to handle. Within only a few years, the whole scenario of shopping has changed dramatically.
But, today as I gasped at the technical luxury of online shopping, I felt hints of losing something valuable, while things were just getting so much comfortable to the world. I will explain you why. Some of my fondest memories of childhood include shopping with mum at dear vegetable-uncle’s stall. How beautiful it was to devour the pleasure of the visual beauty of greens and scarlet and mellow, to ask dear uncle to lend a little ladyfinger for a child’s little kitchen ! How wondrous were the days when I would ride with grandpa in dear summer holidays, with scorching sun rays and dripping sweat that would later benefit a cool coconut-water break after accommodating our fingers with grocery weights. I still ponder over the days when I would run my fingers through the rice filled sacks and colourful pulses at a nearby store. Stumbling over uneven paver blocks or a fallen branch, finding a shady boon in the midst of summer, or even securing an auto rickshaw ride to near home for carrying the veggies and potatoes- these were the real perks of real shopping. The colourful cars, regular honking lanes and busy streets , these are the canvases that have held a major contribution in my memory and thereby, creativity. Despite the lockdown, I still cannot remember experiencing all these little pleasures in the past few years due the sceptical comfort of online shopping. Every moment, every journey has something to give and something to learn. Will the home-prisoned experience of online shopping take away these little pleasures in near future ? Or will it completely take over the ‘ real experience?’ Will the future have no experience of the perks of the real deal?