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04:08 AM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
March 22, 2013
Why do things always look better in a shop than when you buy them and take them home? Why do they look better in a glossy brochure then when you try to fit them into your room and they look faintly ridiculous? These are some of the mysteries the human race is still to solve.
For example, have you seen the peas on a packet? They are big and green and luminous. Peaches in the picture on the tin? Yummm. That TV dinner dish? Mind-blowingly attractive. Now, check the real thing. Ugh.
Look at the shots of recipes…those dishes are to die for. Then you get this wrinkled prune like equivalent for your culinary efforts and the apple crumble is less apple and more crumble.
Check out the pix on the jars and bottles and cans. Fat, thick juicy fruits and veggies, stews that steam off the covers, soups that look abs gorgeous, noodle concoctions that are simply mouthwatering. So buy it and take it home, all you get are lumpy dumplings, sludgy soups, tasteless mango slices in sticky, sweet syrup.
Like in the store window the furniture and the lamps harmonize with the decor and you find them irresistible so you walk into the shop and you say those lamps are wonderful, how much, oh can we, can we, they will fit perfectly into the bedroom.
They don’t. Not the least bit.
So now you are stuck with two lamps that don’t fit into anything. They look ugly as sin.
I wanted to purchase a ‘mod’ hi octane music system the other day so I go and hear this new system and it sounds wonderful, all bass and mega something, it is small but the sound is huge and even the crystal jangles with the purity of the bass. And so I want to take it home for a trial and I do and the mega becomes sort of mini component and the thub-thub thub density of sound that pleased my ears now comes off as a tibtibtib.
Acoustics, says the shopkeeper, your house has the wrong acoustics.
See, it is always my fault.
Guess a house may be a home but it sure isn’t a showroom.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
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When I get into a queue or lane going fast, the moment I get in, it becomes the slowest and refuses to budge.
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