A blog a day (#15)

PANDEMIC BUYING

Period - March 2020. We were in the midst of lockdown I. Most of us were quite unprepared for this form of 'incarceration'. We didn't know what to expect, how long this would last, how to combat the boredom of staying in, and lastly how to purchase our essentials.

My wife and I had just shifted to Chennai from Bangalore and we were not settled fully too; but there was no option. We had to manage the situation. With the help of our neighbour we bought some provisions to last a couple of months and vegetables from a nearby shop which was open. This was godsend and we thought we could manage with this till we were free of the pandemic or the e-commerce sites opened up and started delivering without delay or without mentioning that no deliveries were possible.

Having got used to online purchasing, it was a bit difficult to go back to ordering from local shops where we were unsure of quality of the food items.

Lockdowns came and went; more came, and then some more. This lasted about three to four months. My elder sister has been more enterprising and located an online store for groceries and vegetables where we could order through a whatsapp message and they would deliver within a couple of days. This was godsend and we patronized the e-commerce organisation. The only drawback was that it didn't have any website where we could ourselves select the item and hope to get the same brand and product size that we wanted. But at that time, our requirements were tailored to get what we could and not be too choosy about brand and product size!

With restrictions being periodically lifted by the government, our preferred e-commerce supplier too come online with deliveries within a couple of days, so our choice widened.

Did small shopowners suffer due to the pandemic? The answer to this has to be an unequivocal YES. Did those people who patronized the small shops during the lockdown, continue to do so after lifting of restrictions? I haven't got any answer so far to this question. I have gone back to online e-commerce platforms for my purchases.