MEMORIES AND IRONIES

21st March 2026 was marked as quite an important day in a lot of calendars as it was Ramzan and Nowruz but was pushed to the backdrop of the war ravaging the middle east. For our friend group however, it marked a holiday, much coveted one indeed! It was a Saturday in months where we could go on an outing without having to bother about an assignment due the forthcoming week. Well, that's partly also due to the reason that our end semester exams have commenced and we have got a five days gap in between so the Saturday seemed a perfect day to unwind a little bit. A break seemed to fill the void as we had started writing our exams right after quite a hard toil in the lab.

The day out entailed watching a movie, eating out and going to the mall. I had joined my friends for lunch and skipped the movie due to some personal commitments. It was a spacious restaurant and a culinary delight was something we all craved for to take our mind of some pressing issues for sometime. Once we were done we decided to head out to the nearest mall as we had plenty of time to get the 4:30 PM local train back to campus. At the mall, our group of five split as we had separate agendas. My friend and I had been scouting the mall for some essentials, meanwhile another friend had some shopping to do and my other friends had gone off in a different direction looking for some other things. My friend and I were the earliest to get done with our agenda and while waiting for our other friends we decided to just walk around the mall. My friend had casually remarked on burning calories after the heavy lunch we had.

We were walking around and talking about a myriad of topics and amidst this my phone lost signal for a moment. I couldn't help but think as to how BSNL has the ability to provide high speed internet in the middle of nowhere where other operators do not have range but in the middle of an urban area, it somehow loses connectivity. A moment later, I did get range and we continued our walk around in loops. As we walked around, I came across a couple of shops selling down jackets. Now as the title suggests, this post is about ironies and there were a couple of incredible ones which I'm about to mention. Firstly, its these shops selling down jackets in a place where the yearly minimum temperature is 19 deg C and the yearly average stays around 25 to 30 deg C. Furthermore, isn't it crazy that these were being displayed when the temperature outside was 34 deg C. Certainly not the most ideal weather for any warm clothing! I couldn't get to grips with this as even at my hometown which experiences four seasons and winter temperatures of around 1 to 2 deg C don't stack down jackets during the summer time. Also, isn't it easier to find a wider variety online as such products aren't really the standard demand in a tropical place.

The second irony perhaps stuck out more than the first. My friend and I had been chatting and walking when he pointed towards the bookstore. We entered the bookstore to bide away our time when amongst the stacks he noticed something unnerving. He chuckled with a smirk that the ultimate book was present amongst the dandy paperbacks which lined the three bookshelves in the store while the other shelves had toys and showpieces to attract customers. I took a glance at the ultimate book and to my utter astonishment, it was the "Das Kapital". The irony here is profound that what was such a book which forms the entire basis for communism doing in a shopping complex's bookstore and The backside of the same shelf had quite a few books on making money. From what I understand shopping malls emerged in India after globalization and after our economy opened up in the 1990s. Shopping malls are a part of a free economy and people who shop there certainly have made their money through capitalism. This book was such a contrast as on our way to the bookstore, we had passed by stores from global brands such as H&M and Marks and Spencer's.

"Das Kapital" spotted at Sapna bookstore in Prozone mall, Coimbatore

I remembered a dialogue from the 2019 Bengali film Bhabishyater Bhoot by Anik Dutta which was banned by the state government of West Bengal. The film is a satire of Bengal's politics and has pretty interesting dialogue which goes, "There was once a man called Jibanananda Das (note: Das is very common Bengali surname) who was a hardcore communist during the 34 years of CPM state government in Bengali and after the fall of the government, he became a venture capitalist and named his firm, "Das Capital".

It got me thinking for a moment. We were all the products of a free economy who were born in the 2000s and have experienced consumerism, free internet and ecommerce. Our economy started growing from the 1990s and when we take pride in our 7%+ GDP growth rate, but would it have been possible if our economy had been closed and if we had followed the contents of the aforementioned book? As far as I reckon, we have been taught about the many perils of communism, particularly the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era in our high school history classes. Moreover, isn't it quite crazy that one would buy "Das Kapital" from a shopping mall. Seeing "Das Kapital" in an seventy-eighty year old bookstores stacked with books of yellowing pages amidst a setting of faded wallpaper and plaster peeling off in College Street in Kolkata is fairly normal in my opinion and isn't ironical. Its hard to decipher who the great reader would be who would actually buy it from a mall because isn't it economical to just read it online from Internet Archive where its there for free.

My musings were interrupted when my friend had finished scouting one store and headed to the next and I joined along. Amidst this shopping spree, we realized that we it was about 5:20 in the evening and therefore, we had to take the train at 6 so we hurried down to grab a taxi to take us to the railway station. However, the taxi driver refused to take five of us in as due to upcoming assembly elections in the state, the traffic police were checking cars and four is the general norm. So four of us boarded the cab while another one of our friends got on a bike taxi. As we headed towards the station, the driver of the bike taxi casually remarked that he had some parcels to deliver and that if my friend missed the train, he could be dropped off at the main bus station of the city. While heading to the station, my other friend saw that the train we were supposed to board was partly cancelled which didn't make any sense. As we hopped on to the platform, we saw that the train had chugged out in the opposite direction. Apparently, timing had been adjusted 10 mins before its actual time. We had missed the last train so the only ways to get back were via a cab or to take the bus. Luckily, we narrowly didn't miss the bus.

It was a day filled with memories and some great ironies along the way. Being a third culture kid and having travelled, I have encountered ironies and paradoxes aplenty but I feel that nothing could beat the irony of "Das Kapital" in a mall or down jackets being sold at 34 deg C. Maybe, its these stories which will linger with us in our extremely fast paced lives and despite, our exams, I feel that it was a plunge worth taking and that a sudden disruption to a regular schedule might be what we require to freshen up a little bit and to live in the moment.