Geetanjali Krishna: Tale of a hand-me-down consumer

The other day, Suchitra heaved a huge sigh. I asked her what the matter was and she said, "Oh, it's the usual Diwali spring-cleaning that's getting me down." Given that she lives with her husband in a one-room tenement, I wondered how big a deal spring-cleaning could be for her. "You'd never guess," she said gloomily, "how many possessions we seem to have accumulated over the years." What sorts of possessions, I asked. And thus began her litany of woes, telling me about a parallel consumption economy in the city I had never known existed.

"When I got married three years ago, my ex-employer said she had a spare sewing machine. I couldn't sew and still can't, but kept it thinking it might be of use one day," said Suchitra. However, when the young couple shifted to their tenement, she realised that with the sewing machine and their wedding presents (a dozen steel plates and glasses, a gas stove and bed, to name a few) there was place either for them, or their possessions. "So we scrimped and saved and bought a cupboard," she said. The cupboard took up a third of the room, but she managed to hoard all her hand-me-downs in it. "When my neighbours were shifting, they asked if I'd like to keep their bamboo rack," she said. Of course she kept the rack, cleverly hanging it on a wall to save floor space.
 

Sometime later, she heard that someone her employers knew was revamping their kitchen. "Imagine, they were giving away perfectly good pots and pans because they'd bought new ones in Dubai," she exclaimed. Then her employer bought new teacups and gave Suchitra the old ones. Meanwhile, her sister's employer gave her a treasure trove of old clothes and shoes in a steel trunk. Many of these found their way into Suchitra's tiny room. "How could I let perfectly usable things be thrown away? It's not as if anyone can have too many clothes and shoes… And the trunk hid all these things and was great to sit on!"

Needless to say, her trunk, rack and cupboard rapidly became crammed to capacity. Recently, when her employers bought a new TV and asked her if she'd like to have their old one, it was the final straw. "Of course I wanted the TV! But our room really had no more space. There is only one thing left to do now," she said. "We just have to move to a bigger place. I know someone who's giving away a nice bed, and I'm sure during this season my employers will upgrade to a better washing machine. We have to have place for these new things."

As she bustled about, our conversation made me see that over the last few years, as consumption levels in middle class households have increased substantially, the lives of people who work for them have also changed. This was most apparent during the festive season, Suchitra said, for when people revamped their homes, kitchens and wardrobes, all their discards trickled down to people like her. "For instance, this year, I've received 14 perfectly good salwars as they have been replaced by palazzos for the fashion-conscious. And my husband is waiting for his employer to buy the new iPhone 6, to ask him for his older model," she said.

In the meantime, just as it was for people like us, spring-cleaning was proving to be quite a chore for Suchitra. "Didi, I'm thinking that I too will start giving away all my surplus things," she said. "Please let me know if you come across any poor soul who would like a sewing machine, hardly used, and a dozen mismatched teacups."