The fancification of life

My wife and I are as megalopolitan as the next puffed-up Delhiwallah; well-read, semi-sophisticated and just snobbish enough to sneer at people who say aloo sabzi instead of potato-au-gratin.

- K.C. VERMA

Yet I was intrigued by that bizarrely shaped gadget in the store window. I asked the missus what it could be, but she merely shrugged her shoulders. "Why don't you go in and ask?" So we entered the shop. It had that peculiar reverential hush which seems to embrace the loaded shopaholic while booting out the impoverished window shopper. I diffidently approached the salesgirl-who was studying her nails with great concentration.

"Excuse me," I said politely, "that oddly shaped thing in the show window... what might it be?" She drew herself up to her full height of five-feetnothing and looked down at me, though how she managed to do that was a mystery.

"That, sir," she said with unwarranted superciliousness, "is a nail-clipper." And then taking me to be a total bumpkin, she added in Hindi, "Is se nakhoon kate jaate hain [These are used to cut nails]. Nails. Cut.

Karte. Hain." If my face could have changed colour, it would have gone from swarthy to tomato-red. I mumbled something incoherent, fled the shop, and the missus trailed behind, giggling so hard she nearly tripped over her own amusement.