What we bargain for

Sometimes I wonder how, as a member of the shopping public, I can be so easily taken in by the bargain buys being advertised everywhere — hoardings, shop windows, newspaper ads ... everywhere.

"Exchange old jeans in whatever condition and get X amount off on new ones!" I read and rush there, the old jeans in a pretty pristine state, having just got too tight for me to squeeze into.

"Sure, we'll take them", I'm told by an obliging and personable young thing.

"Choose another pair from those shelves there and we'll give you 100 off the price." Whoosh — the wind goes out of my sails, deflating the excited blimp of my mood and I wish the fat would ooze out as easily. That 100 quoted in reverent tones is only a fraction of the price — why, I'd be a lot better off, financially and cardiovascularly, if I skipped that much worth of meals every day and wriggled my way back into the old pair!

I'm not the only sucker for bargains.

The other day the chief breadwinner came in delighted with himself, eager to keep a promise he'd made some three decades earlier and reneged on. "I'll get you a diamond", he said.

"I have this great offer on the net — it's practically free — come and choose".

Having in the course of the same three decades lost the sleek setting for practically every kind of accessory, I wasn't keen on drawing attention to my wrinkled neck or careworn hands. "Sparklers are for the sparkling", was the gist of my long-winded and not very gracious refusal. Friends up and down the age scale protested.

"We'll accept the offer for you! No one refuses a diamond — whether a flake or a shard or a stone! Send him to us, we'll take up his offer and in exchange cook free meals for him for a year ... " The suggestions were many and varied but all roughly along the same lines: offers like that were not to be turned down at any age!

At last, in the face of all that flak, I fin-ally looked at what was on offer — and ‘practically free' didn't spring out at me from anywhere in the brochure!

Why do we fool ourselves with these offers that bombard us, I wondered, especially during the festive season, which, in India, is practically year-round, some community or some part of the country having something to celebrate every month?

Unfortunately, all this wisdom came late in our lives after we had already spent a small fortune at various bargain basements over the years. Nothing is more appealing for the bargain seeker than two (or three, or more) for the price of one, and this has done us in time and time again. For that one piece we've set our hearts on — be it shirt or skirt or dinner plate — we wade through shelves of slow-moving items that lack appeal and finally pick up the least offending to the eye as the other half of the offer.

And now, surrounded by a volume of junk — furniture, dishes, clothes, shoes, knick-knacks — we still obstinately refuse to admit that we'd been hasty. Those were all good bargains at the time, we say, to appease our own consciences.

And to counteract the possibility of getting taken in again, we get overly suspicious when there are genuine marked-down sales of items that we've seen in the showcases at full price only weeks earlier. Or, shamelessly, we go to a throwaway sale and try to bargain and bring down prices even further.

Can we never achieve the happy mean?

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.