You’ve just cost me a fortune,” said Sarla, clutching shopping bags with both hands and looking extremely pleased in the bargain. “Me too,” said Padma, pushing fake Diors off her face and posing in teetering heels that couldn’t have come from any Fendi showroom but probably had a Ghaffar Market sticker where it couldn’t be seen.
We’d gathered for lunch at a restaurant that once had a name you could pronounce, but now consisted of an unintelligible collection of alphabets rearranged in a manner that sounded like it had been faked, though, of course, it was the real thing. “Every time I come here, I promise myself I won’t shop,” said Sarla’s husband – for the brands in the mall were all the highest end that, if they could, would charge you for polluting their rarefied atmosphere with your middle-class breath – “but every time,” he grinned, “I break my promise.”
Like his wife, Sarla’s husband too was clutching bags from Tom Ford and Harry Winston and Hugo Boss. “Paid a packet,” he said happily, “but it’s worth it, I say.” Later, my wife said, “I don’t think he fooled anybody.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Tut-tut, you silly man,” she said, “Amrita saw their chauffeur carrying all those bags from the boot of the car into the mall, so it’s clear they brought those bags from their home to fool you into thinking they’d been shopping here.”
I might not have believed my wife if it hadn’t been for our other friends, Chandni and Chanda, who joined us later for cappuccinos at the ground floor café, themselves carrying bags, somewhat scuffed, but bearing such labels as Versace and Canali. “You’ve been shopping,” squealed my wife, clapping in hands. “Yes, darling,” said Chandni, “you’ll love it,” and out of the Canali bag fished out a Mango packet, from which she extracted a trendy jacket. “And what’s wonderful,” she purred, “is that it was on sale.”
The wives spent the next couple of minutes exclaiming over how Mango was their absolute favourite, till finally I interrupted to ask, “But if you’re so fond of the brand, why hide it in a Canali bag?” “Look around you, you dolt,” mocked Chandni, “and tell me what you see.” It was true that the well-heeled who’d sunk into the sofas all around seemed better suited to the Louis Vuitton bags and Bottega Veneta shopping bags they were carrying than high street labels such as Zara at the mall next door, but I was still perplexed. “When in Rome et cetera,” grinned Chanda, and opened the Versace bag he was carrying to reveal his Fabindia shopping inside.”
It was dishonest and wicked and ought not to have been right, but I saw the logic of it right away. Having seen our friends off, I walked into a Burberry showroom and told the lady there that my shopping bag had burst, and could she spare me a paper bag please — which she did, reluctantly. So armed, I set off for my meeting at the same café with a luxury consultant I was seeing for the first time. “This place,” said the consultant, “is hard on one’s credit card,” placing a Gucci bag on the table between us. “Every time I come here, I promise myself I won’t shop,” I agreed – my Burberry joining her Gucci on the table – “but every time I break my promise.” Both of us having thus established our fake credentials, we got on with the task at hand — discussing a white paper on the growing incidence of counterfeits in the Indian market.
