Having been brought up in a family of girls, my knowledge of the male shopping habits is limited to the study of a few selected Y-chromosome-card holders -- mainly the spouse, but also friends and their spouses and hearsay about someone-or-the-other’s acquaintance and so on. My father does not figure in this – he belonged to that generation where it was understood that grocery shopping and vegetable shopping were the forte of the woman of the house. For better or worse, my mother had to do that and I usually accompanied her on her daily trips to the vegetable market. In the present day and age, it isn’t openly admitted but boils down to the same thing – surprise, surprise -- it’s the wife who manages the portfolio of grocery and vegetable shopping.
After days of tenacious nagging (in his words) or reasoning (the female spouse’s point of view), the reluctant male agrees to go vegetable shopping if the wife would make a list of what she would like. Just to underline the point – He would not even want to get out a paper and pencil to write down the list. Well, once the list is made, there is a last-ditch effort to get the wife to come along – “we can drive down in the car” ( to the vegetable vendor who sells vegetables just outside the apartment complex where they live ) – when this priceless offer is turned down, he shuffles off listlessly, usually leaving the all-important list behind at home. If this happens, one can expect to see just tons of tomatoes, potatoes and onions when he returns – the only vegetables he can identify by sight !
The vegetable vendor prays vehemently that she might get at least one male shopper everyday. It is all she can do to stop herself from falling down on her knees and thanking God when one such vision appears near her cart. The most ideal characteristic of this paragon (from the vendor’s point of view) is that he won’t even enquire about the price per kilogram of anything. He just reels off his requirements from a list and asks for how much he needs to pay – choosing the vegetables is left to the vendor. The vendor can also easily dispose most of her cache of old and tired-looking vegetables that even the neighbourhood cow would not look at – the male shopper with his “I’m-in-such-a-rush-and-please-won’t-you-just-tell-me-how-much-to-pay-so-I-can-go” attitude almost invites this upon himself. Also, any suggestions from the vendor as to alterations in the quantities are accepted without hesitation – thus, a man might return home with a kilo’s worth of green chillies, while his wife would have considered a tenth of that too much !! It is also easy to hoodwink these child-like beings – at least 60% of male shoppers cannot distinguish between cauliflowers (usually expensive) and cabbages (generally cheap). Someone I know came back with a kilo of sapotas (a brown-skinned fruit) when he meant to buy potatoes ! The unfortunate man attempted to get out of this by blaming the poor light in the evenings. And the icing on the cake -- the male shopper does not stoop to bargaining ! No wonder the vendor enquires after the well-being of my husband with such loving concern ...
Sometimes I wonder whether this twice-a-year or at best, thrice-a-year phenomenon is stage managed ?! Frankly, if each time the male shopper comes back with lifeless vegetables while paying top prices, maybe the frequency of such requests to go vegetable shopping would drop ? Maybe the Y-chromosomers are smarter than most of their wives think .....
(Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable)
