This evening we went shopping for a few necessaries: dish soap, tea, milk, sugar, yogurt for the morning, and a few packets of things I couldn’t resist, including red rice (Unrefined rice! Yay!).
We went to Nilgiri’s, an old and famous grocery store known for excellent quality. It’s also air conditioned, so a shopping trip is a welcome respite from the clammy heat that precedes a thunderstorm here.
Yes, a thunderstorm started while we were in the store. We finished our shopping and sat on some stone steps to watch the rain pound down. After a few minutes, we looked at our grocery receipt, and were startled to discover that we seemed to have purchased tampons, badam milk (sweetened milk with soaked ground almonds and cardamom), 18 Herbs green tea, and American Garden coconut juice with pulp. Alan figured out the probable reason for these items, but curious anyway, we went back into the store and asked the young clerks if they could explain the receipt to us.
Clearly, they’d answered such questions before. With friendliness and barely contained amusement, they told us that when they don’t have an item entered in the point-of-sale system, they simply substitute another item that sells at the same price. This was exactly what Alan had already guessed, but we really enjoyed getting his guess confirmed in such a charming way.
Rambulatory 