Confessions of a ‘brand slave’

A few months back a colleague of mine termed me as a ‘brand slave’ and I just laughed it off as I did not see any truth in it. Just possessing a few ‘decent’ shirts and some gizmos does not make someone a brand slave. But his remarks made me think for a while and there were some specks of truth here and there.
Some introspection, retrospection and inspection of credit card bills confirmed that I might not be brand slave but I share many common characteristics. Recently I have been shopping like a maniac and shopping from the big brands..paying some extravagant amounts for things which could have easily been acquired at half the prices. Though this has more to do with my laziness and propensity to visit only a few locations (read shopping malls in Chennai) on weekends and most of the things catching my fancy there  (hmmm .. do not get me wrong most of the time I am looking for things I really need .. no clean clothes.. presentation in morning hours.. no option other than buying some new clothes..) were having tags from big names. I cannot recall how many times I wanted to buy just a book but ended up buying which I never intended.
So what now… the last two months I have completely curbed by desire to shop (though the I had already made up my mind to get MacBook for my personal use so I am not counting that … anyway a Mac is a necessity considering the terrible to Windows Vista) and realized I am far better off this way. It is not long enough to conclude anything, but I realized that I never wanted to go for brands, it was just that whenever I decided to buy something I was at places which were dominated by big brands. Probably if I had lower priced alternative that prominently  registering their presence I would have gone for that. Moreover I realized that I am in bad habit of not looking at price if something caught my fancy.. thanks to ICIC Bank and their pestering tele-callers who pushed three credit cards in my pocket. I don’t want to tell you how I felt when I used to get the credit cards bills. But thankfully things are under control.

On other front, I am halfway through two books and hope to finish them once I get some breather from these couple of hectic work weeks. Both the books are quite interesting.. hope to write about them in details once I finish them..

• “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” by Murakami, and
• “Kill Your Friends” by John Niven