Some of us find it a struggle to splurge, especially when we are in foreign lands and the rupee does not take us very far.

It is difficult to shut our eyes to price tags and just buy-buy-buy. True, those who take time to consider how badly they need a thing and how much money they have available to pay for it are getting harder to find in the world of plastic money, but they are still there. Mostly grey-haired (but not necessarily), they ruminate over the quality, the colour, the design, the utility of having such an item around the house or in the wardrobe or on the shoe rack. But most of all, it boils down to the price.

If they are good at mental arithmetic, they will do a quick calculation and say: “Fifty dirhams/euros/dollars — that works out to ... no way! I’ll get it from somewhere else someday for a lot less!” But they cannot give it up and walk out of the shop. They hover around the item. They pick it up again. They turn it around. They look for something similar and smaller on nearby shelves, hoping to find a cheaper replica. Or they stand outside and gaze through the window, waiting for lunch hour to be over and done with so that they can maybe haggle a bit, even if haggling is not done in that part of the world.

And then finally, when second and third thoughts and calculations and re-calculations tell them that it is best they walk on empty handed, they do. Reluctantly. Heavy hearted. Hoping that the next day they can make a quick dash back to the shop and see whether the price of the item they have set their hearts on has plummeted or the value of the rupee has suddenly peaked and this is their lucky credit-card day.

But of course, there are no second chances when we are out on such jaunts. Most likely, we did not get to pass that way again. Even if we do, it is highly likely that we won’t recognise the shops because so much more has assaulted our senses in the intervening 12 or 18 or 24 hours.

And so we go home, ever regretful of the striped matting bag we left behind in the Yangshuo market, the book ends we spotted after hours in the shop window in Granada, the book of myths and legends we over-thought about and laid back down on the shelf in Prague — in all cases, picking up cheap souvenirs instead.

Sometimes, we also rue that we did not buy enough of a particular ‘find’ — orange marmalade from Seville perhaps or the bells with the delightful tinkle or the goulash powder in a packet in Budapest — for when we come back home we realise that we have more loved ones than we had realised. It hurts to have to say “one for her, one for him” when what we would like to do is put in a little of everything for everyone!

Yes, sadly, there are more things we have left behind than we have brought back from our travels — settling, as we usually do, for things that take up little space and do not cost the earth. But when we look back and think ruefully of those missed buys we now know that it is only half the story. There is much to mourn for what we did not buy, but I think we lament more the things we finally settled for that now dot the house and need to be dusted, dismantled and in most cases, repaired!

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.