Currrent - Issue

SHOPPING FOR INDIA
Whether they buy dal or Bollywood DVDs, spices or Basmati, for Indian immigrants in Australia shopping from an ethnic store, loaded with ethnic food items, is an important ritual because it evokes thoughts of home.
                                                                                                By Indrani Talukdar in Melbourne

AUSTRALIA : Shopping Down Under
   The aroma hits you even as the sliding doors begin to open. The combined odors of methi, coriander, cumin, bay leaves et al rises over the non-stop chatter in Hindi or Punjabi; jute sacks bulging with Basmati rice and moong dal lie strewn across the floor in a careless heap as a bevy of Punjabi women gingerly make their way to the counter, avoiding the spills from the bloating pouches, their heavy gold bangles jingling to the rhythm of the latest Bollywood chartbuster. In a far corner some students argue in Hindi and Urdu over the most watchable rental movie of the week a
as  they bend over a pile of videos and DVDs.

A common enough scene: Delhi's INA Market or Connaught Place, did you say? Well, not so out of place either in Melbourne, which is considered even more culturally diverse than San Francisco. A report in the Herald Sun (June 23, 2002) makes a mention of the Indian groceries which are "... dotted around Melbourne where, once inside, you get the feeling that you are being transported back in time where spice merchants sold their wares unprocessed and by the pound..."

Indian groceries are the natural fall-out of the Indian diaspora which picked up speed after Australia abolished its 'Whites only' policy in the early 1970s. But these outlets are not just your ordinary 'bread-anda' stores from back home. Apart from curry leaves and methi seeds, they also sell audio cassettes, Indian CDs and Bollywood hits. Most stock favorite Indian brands like Haldiram’s sweets and laddoos and Lijjat papad. To be sure, this pilgrimage of Indian goods (and goodies) is not restricted to the present. In their book India, China, Australia: Trade and Society 1788-1850, historians James Broadbent, Suzanne Rickard and Margaret Steven refer to the teeming trade links between India and Australia th during the early 19 century.

 
" Australia’s taste in takeaway food has changed over the past two years with Italian food remaining the most popular cuisine followed by modern Australian, Chinese, Thai and Indian."

They mention how, on a winter’s day in 1792, the Atlantic which had just returned from Calcutta anchored in Sydney Cove "to the inexpressible joy of all ranks of people in the settlement" who enthusiastically received the cargo of "rice, sougee and Dholl."

Calcutta, then known as the City of Palaces or the St Petersburg of the East, figured prominently in the trade links between the two countries. International goodies such as French wines, German ham, Irish linen and Indian namkeen would be shipped from its shores to Australia.

Prominent historian William Dalrymple in his May 2003 review of the book writes: "To this rich, glamorous and decadent world, wealthy Australians girls would go to be "finished" and find wealthy husbands without criminal records. From it streamed retired colonials, bringing Anglo Indian furniture and architectural styles, "punkahs," a taste for spicy food... At the beginning th of the 19 century, a surprising number of British colonial families made a life for themselves in the new Australian colonies after collecting taxes on the banks of the Ganges..."

Yet the transnational vending activity transcends a simple transplantation of known brands. To the migrant community from India, indeed from all over South Asia, these outlets provide a social platform away from home.

Maureen De Souza, a Sri Lankan migrant who is a resident of the elitist Glen Waverly and loves to shop in Venus, the main Indian/Sri Lankan bazaar of the southern suburb says, "It is a nice socializing spot as I often bump into my friends there. Sometimes I meet relatives—my husband's cousins—at the shop whom I have no hope of meeting in other social situations."

Abhilasha Goel, an Ashburton housewife says she prefers to buy dal and rice, both readily available in supermarkets at competitive prices, from an Indian store because "it evokes thoughts of home."

In his paper Disjuncture and Difference in the Cultural Economy eminent philosopher and culture theorist Arjun Appadurai talks about "imagined communities" where images of the homeland get invested in inanimate articles. He writes: "The world we live in is characterized by a new role for the imagination in social life... the idea of the imagined community... No longer mere fantasy... the imagination has become an organized field of social practices..."

The shopper who parks his or her Holden in a street corner lined by the Melbourne City Council's neatly appointed bins, steps into a different world the moment he or she walks into an Indian store. Be it the fashionable Seven Day Store of up market Prahran or the uncompromisingly ethnic Arjuna’s Indian VENDING NOSTALGIA: Ethnic shops in Australia cater to homesick Indians Groceries of the relatively penurious Footscray, the "Indianness" is inescapable.

Dinesh Gourisetty from Hyderabad who is one of the proprietors of Spice Zone in Footscray, the most obviously ethnic suburb in Melbourne, says, "We package an entire lifestyle and give it to our homesick customer." His shop close to the Footscray station is stocked with Bollywood blockbusters in DVDs and videos, phone cards, frozen Indian curries and spices.

Groceries, says Surya Prakash, one of the proprietors of Spice Zone, is the mainstay of the ethnic market. Not so, says Farah Haroun, an Indian from Fiji and credited with opening the first Indian shop in Melbourne about 20 years ago in the suave Glen Iris. With a definite eye on the entertainment market, her large outlet houses a mind-boggling array of DVDs and videos. "Time was," asserts Haroun, "when Bollywood aficionados from distant suburbs would flock to this shop which was started by my husband." People who come shopping for Bollywood material end up buying that extra packet of dal or cloves.

Bollywood shopping too is habit-dependent. Abhilasha Goel goes to a video outlet in Box Hill but prefers to do her grocery shopping at Hindustan Exports in Carrumdowns.

Shopping proclivities form distinct ethnic patterns insists Prokash Kumar Kundu, the market savvy Victoria University IT graduate who is also the proprietor of Bhorer Pakhi, the only Bengali grocery and video outlet in Melbourne. The Bangladeshi national who started the store with some friends last year in July has already seen unprecedented growth with his DVD stock alone reaching well over 2,000. Sticking to a grueling 12- hour regime including weekends, Prokash prides himself in judging customers via ethnicity.

Catering to a huge bulk of customers who flow into the store like crowds during cricket and never stopping till 10 p.m. he does a quick mental calculation while serving. "The Africans," he says, "are sheer Bollywood maniacs. Most of them buy 10 Shahrukh Khan movies at one go."

Surprisingly enough, Hindu religious audiovisual content is highly popular with Pakistanis who usually root for the schmaltz-dripped Pakistani plays. The former is borne out by Bobby Suri, the young proprietor of Arjuna’s who says, "I have seen young people watch Ramayana and Chanakya with avidity in Karachi."

Bollywood, obviously, is the biggest attraction, the main seducer. Catering to a largely treacly In his paper Disjuncture and Difference in song-and-dance escapist genre, its popularity with the 'non-western' world is phenomenal. Every shopping outlet, be it messy mazy Bhorer Pakhi or the natty Spice Zone, sports a poster of the latest Hindi film hit. Says Prokash, "I had started out as a stockist for calling cards, offering the cheapest deals to India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. But I decided later that I wouldn’t have a business without Bollywood."

Shopping behavior too, apart from Bollywood buying, differs along ethnic lines. Says Prokash, "Some ethnic groups like the Africans come in droves and usually browse for a long time before doing any real buying." While some Indians and Sri Lankans can be finicky, "the Australians are the most decisive shoppers who never beat about the bush" according to Gourisetty of Spice Zone.

The Australian presence in the Indian shopping hub seems to be growing as well. TThe Daily Telegraph in a report culled from the Australian Foodservice Market 2002-2004 cites the following fact: "Australia's taste in takeaway food has changed a little over the past two years with Italian food remaining the most popular cuisine followed by modern Australian, Chinese, Thai and Indian. The Australians are also keener to use spices in cooking with the use of spices rising up to 70 per cent compared to a decade ago."

Shopping is not just an activity but a social space, a nodal galactic of convivial interaction. Bobby Suri says, for instance, "When couples drop by, the lady will shop to her heart's content while the man enjoys a 20-minute heart-to-heart conversation with me." The tęte-ŕ-tęte is not seen as a waste of time, rather a good PR exercise.

Purnima Manekar of Stanford University in her thesis 'India Shopping': Indian Grocery Stores and Transnational Configurations writes: "In addition to providing the familiar sounds of Indian bazaars, these stores provide other auditory links with the homeland through the music they sell."

It is certainly interesting how Bollywood and other Indian audio-visual items configure as 'homeland' nostalgia elements for non-Indians like Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis.

So, what is the rationale for shopping? Put more simply, why do people shop at all? "Shopping," says Helen Goh, a well-known relationship psychologist who runs her practice from Carlton, "is also a therapeutic exercise. There is a feel-good factor involved there, a feeling of power, of being pampered because you, the customer, are treated like a king." For the yearning Indian, it is a little bit more: a transportation back in time-and space.