Rotten buys

To our grocery shopper go Reliance's spoils.

A minor kerfuffle has broken out at the Reliance hypermart in Mayur Vihar, where my wife and I are grocery shopping. My wife has plastic-bagged brinjals (Rs 9.99 a kilo) and okra (Rs 11.99), cabbage (Rs 16), cauliflower (Rs 24.99) and capsicum (Rs 50), remarking that the prices are lower and the quality better than that of comparable vegetables at vendor carts in the market. She adds Kullu apples (Rs 59.99) and corn (Rs 14) to her list, I help out with a tray of sliced pineapple rings (Rs 25 for 200 gm) and another of miscellaneous cut vegetables (Rs 20 for 250 gm).

But you also gets what you pays — I spot a tray of spoilt guavas for Rs 30 and pick some in a bag, to which I add, from the marked down section, sponge gourd or tori (reduced from Rs 28 to Rs 5 per kg), golden apple (Rs 10 from Rs 60), chikoo (Rs 6 a kg), and onions for Rs 13.99 a kilo.

Problem is, the gentleman at the counter who weighs our vegetables refuses to bill us for the samples, not because they aren’t for sale, but because he suspects the intent of a well-dressed, English-speaking couple wanting to purchase what are rotten vegetables and fruit. These are for poor people, he says. I’d like to buy them, I say. Mumbai hasn’t sent the day’s price for them, he counters. I tell him the prices are labelled. He removes the labels, and says fresh prices will take a half-hour.

I carry my bag of rotten vegetables to the check-out counter and ask for a bill. The man at the counter who takes them to the grocery section returns without the bag. I ask for the store manager; an assistant comes forward to help. I tell her I need my bag of vegetables and bill; she examines the spoils from the counter, asks me to wait. The manager comes over, asks me if there is a problem. No, I say, I just need my vegetables and my bill. These are for vendors, he points to the shelves of priced-down vegetables. If they’re for sale, I want them, I insist.

They confabulate some more, looking uneasy, but I’m finally billed for my rotten produce, the prices now knocked down to Rs 2.97 a kg for the onions, Rs 3.03 for the gourd, Rs 3.03 for the apples, Rs 3 for the guavas, and Rs 3.06 for the chikoo.

Score: 0/10. Despite their excellent prices, for the contempt in which they hold the poor, Reliance deserves our contempt too.

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