Today was shopping day for Pragati, and I tagged along. It was back to one of my favourite locations in the city – Vorosmarty Square. Vaci ut (which Gabor had described as “a street set up specifically to loot tourists) beckoned ahead. Pragati had decided that today she would attack each store on Vaci ut, one by one. And no sooner had she reached the place than she darted into the first one. By the time she’d come out of the fourth or fifth shop, she’d not bought anything.
As for me, it was an education in fashion – something that I could perhaps use while “rutting for quizzes” in Herr-Vinai-Schenoi parlance. It was the first time I had seen the inside of a Marks and Spencers store. Until now “the ignorant me” had thought they sold glasses (aka ‘Lawrence & Mayo’, ‘Bausch & Lomb’ etc). My understanding was that “Zara” was the surname of a Shah Rukh Khan Movie. And “Mac”? I’d always eaten them – never knew that they were cosmetics. One look at the prices and I decided that everything in these stores look better as exhibits and not as sale items. Pragati also (self-confession) seems to have changed her shopping habits, since she was looking at the price tags. There was that small matter of buying a pair of jeans at the Zara store, where she could not find a pair that had the brand of Zara in it. My silly suggestion that she stick the bill from the store on the jeans to announce that it had indeed been bought there was met with the usual response: “Are you mad?”
I liked the “Douglas” store though, since this was the first time I was seeing so many products of the so called famous names of fashion – Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, Estee Lauder etc. – at close quarters. The store was set up on the ground floor of a building with beautifully colored tiles on the roof and the walls. But if there was one particular shop that interested me most, it was the one next door to this. On the display window was one of the eeriest “product” exhibitions I’ve ever seen. The scene was that of an enchanted forest. Roots and branches filled the window, as if barely a ray of light would penetrate the forest. An old wizard with a crooked nose was waving his lantern from one side to the other. A cat slept on one of the tree branches. A couple of elves flapped their wings. It seemed to have come right out of Diagon Alley.
We decided to have dinner from one of the cafes set up on the street sides, and headed back to Vorosmarty Square. The place was now extremely crowded, thanks to a superb song and dance performance being enacted out by a band. We found a table under the canopies of the Gerbeaud Haz, right in front of the performing artists. Pragati was completely enamored by their dance performance. The square was now completely filled with families. Kids were freely running helter-skelter, with more than one kid licking on ice creams (Pragati included). We just sat there for almost an hour enjoying the whole performance.
After dinner (or what amounted to it), I took her to the river side, to show her what she missed yesterday – the lit up bridge. And her response: “There can’t be anything better than this”. As for me, this is my fifth trip to the bridge during the last one week, and I can’t seem to get over it.
Observation of the Day:
The Hungarian people are really beautiful. According to an unnamed source, “5% of Indians are good-looking and 5% of Hungarians are not good-looking”.
Pic of the Day: Life is always beautiful when you have no worries
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