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SPOILT for CHOICE
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Choices often bring not freedom but boredom. You might love the sensation of being a child in a mithai shop, but after you've gorged yourself sick, what then?
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From life to lifestyle, one has to make a range of choices.
I NEVER thought I'd live to see the day when the telecom department would ask me to choose my own phone number. That was nine years ago, and the moment it happened I knew that it marked the dawning of a bold new era in our nation. Okay, okay, it was a new telephone exchange with few subscribers, but all the same... An official actually came home with a list of numbers of which the ticked ones were already taken. He looked on encouragingly while I ran my eye across the figures. I zeroed in on two that seemed easy to remember, meditated for a few minutes, and ticked one. The instant he left, I wished I'd bagged the other number. That's the maddening thing about choice: no sooner do you make it than you regret it. Can you look me in the eye and declare that you've never spoken the words: "I should have bought the other one"?
Choosing has always been an anxiety-ridden affair, but these days it's getting positively irritating. I realised that inconsequential choices were complicating my life when I went out to buy my usual brand of sandalwood soap. The company had decided to give me an alternative: it was round instead of oval, twice as heavy, and came in a pack of three. Except for some, er, cosmetic changes, it was the same old soap. There was no reason to buy it. And there was no reason not to. If you peek into my bathroom today you'll find an overweight cake of soap bulging out of the tray like a fat man in a toy car.
Have I radically enhanced the quality of my life by using a round soap instead of an oval one? That's what the manufacturer would have me believe. Choice has been robbed of its deeper meaning by advertising and industry. It is associated more with toothp0
aste and underwear than with democracy and liberation, and voting is all about picking the sexiest man in India or the TV movie of the month. Too many choices when it comes to lifestyle and not enough when it comes to life — that's the way I see it. If only we had as illuminating a range of politicians to choose from as we do ballpoint pens or light fixtures, our lives wouldn't be the same.
Choices often bring not freedom but boredom. You might love the sensation of being a child in a mithai shop, but after you've gorged yourself sick, what then? After you've drunk, bought, used, worn, eaten, driven, played, experienced, everything that the market has on offer, there's nothing left to do but buy yourself a customised potty for Rs 2.5 lakh and watch your life go down the toilet.
In my own humble endeavours to challenge consumerism I'm faced with a vexing question: do I constantly change brands or stick to the same ones? If the former, I'd be patronising newer products and hence encouraging their proliferation. If the latter, I'd be falling for the brand loyalty trap and the company wins. What method do I choose? Grrr, choices again. At least it's just an either/or.
Some of us fogeys unused to unlimited choices are stuck in an either/or world: coffee or tea, cash or cheque, this or that, yes or no, in or out. We're used to saying "what is the alternative?" rather than "what are the options?" After all, Robert Frost only spoke of two roads, although if he were alive today he might quite possibly write a poem on 10 highways, listing the pluses and minuses of each. We're the sort of people who, when asked while dining out with friends what we would like want to order, reply: "Oh, anything." The height of choice, for us, is being able to demand a two-by-three coffee, or idlis with "sambar separate" instead of partially submerged idli islands floating in a sea of sambar.
One's path is littered with choices of schemes for pizzas, pressure cookers, cars, credit, investments, insurance, mobile phones, magazine subscriptions, anything that doesn't move or talk back. I often feel as though someone's bombarding me with coloured marbles and they're rolling all over the floor to trip me up when I step on them. I can't order a simple lime-juice without being asked by the waiter: "Sugar? Salt? Or sugar with a pinch of salt? Soda or water? Ice?" Obviously, the last place you should take me to is one of those specialty tearooms that offer 46 varieties of tea, for I can't tell a lapsang souchong from a lapis lazuli. As for coffee, it's not a mere choice of "filter or instant" but of geographical regions and ingenious blends. Such an ordeal, I tell you.
It must be an ordeal for you, too. Haven't you ever sunk into the showroom trance? You walk into a showroom and the salesman shows you 10 models and points out their unique features by lapsing into a stream of technobabble. Your thoughts are far away. You're making your choice. How? By playing inky-pinky-ponky in your mind. It's your only resort when you're hopelessly incapable of making an informed choice. Such a relief to see, scribbled on a board outside a "Meals Ready" hotel, these simple words: K.P. / C.P. Kerala Parotta or Ceylon Parotta, either/or.
But it's no longer an either/or world. Right or wrong? Not any more. That's a multiple-choice question, folks.
C.K. MEENA
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