Window Shopping

I didn’t pay a lot of attention during high school.  So when I started college, I needed to catch up and get ahead.  I doubled up my undergraduate schoolwork with a chartered accountancy course.  Coursework and my class schedule consumed all waking hours, Monday to Saturday.  Sunday was the only day off.  

Mom always loved window shopping.  She loved perusing, comparing, parsing; an actual purchase was an occasional afterthought.  She had two boys so sometimes when she was missing out on having a companion for (window) shopping sprees, I would accompany her.  

We drove the short distance from Sarita Vihar to Lajpat Nagar market and always parked in our regular parking spot.  If it was April or May, and falsas were in season, we would beeline to the falsa and jamun street vendor.  I LOVE falsas, always have done.  We would each have our newspaper cone filled with tart falsa berries tossed with black salt.  We snacked on falsas as we walked our regular route through Lajpat Nagar, meandering through stall after stall.  

Regular stops included a fabric store, where one could pick out fabric and then get clothes, shawls or dupattas, stitched or hemmed from your local tailor.  Another frequent haunt was a men’s clothing store, where I would browse through pants, button-down shirts, or kurtas.  We seldom purchased anything of significant value, maybe a dupatta or small clothing item; regardless we spent hours strolling through the market.  In between window shopping, we would stop and eat gol gappe and papdi chaat.  The window shopping outing always ended with a ram laddu snack (lentil fritters, radish and green chili slaw, tamarind chutney).  [Jeet]