Time to be choosy about choosing

Enter anything in the search bar on Amazon and one gets more than 100,000 results from thousands of vendors. The search for perfect choice goes on and on. The sheer variety and convenience of choice in shopping today is mind-blowing.

The other day my son said to me, “if you have a phone and money in your pocket, dial you can have any meal you want”. With my son’s utterances, a river of memories gushed through my mind and nostalgia tightened its grip on me. As a kid in my home ‘atta’ was never purchased, it was wheat that was bought in sacks during summers, washed, dried in sun and stored in a huge iron drum. The month’s requirement was taken out, sent to chakki and grinded into atta. The journey of steaming hot roti was a long one.

Nowadays, whenever I need ‘atta’ or ‘rice’, we go to the grocery shop and find numerous varieties of atta and rice adorning the shelves. You can find M P wheat, bran, atta, soya and gram atta, basmati rice and brown rice.

And the milk-- flavoured, low-fat, full cream, soya milk all in plastic pouches made me recall my ‘gwala days’, when a buffalo owner delivered it at our door-step. After the milk was boiled and cooled, malai with thick foam on it was eaten after adding sugar in it. Otherwise ‘malai’ was churned into dazzling white butter which was eaten with paranthas in the breakfast.

Amul butter was an occasional treat that we got. Seasonal vegetables were cooked at home. Now vegetables and fruits come from different countries and states. From a menu, one can hardly tell whether it is summer or winter.

Vico vajardanti cream is replaced by numerous brands of moisturizers which revitalize, and rejuvenate skin. In footwear there are casual, formal, canvas shoes, sandals, floaters, sports, running, jogging shoes and high heeled boots.

An overload of choice unsettles the layers of neurons in the brain. The confusion with an overload of choice, raises a question in mind--do more choices equal better choices? American psychologist Barry Schwartz captures this conflict of choices in his book, ‘The Paradox of Choice’. When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable but as the number of choices kee growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. At this point choice no longer liberates but debilitates.

Consumers get confused and many times make the wrong choice in a moment’s whim. I believe it is time to change our attitude from more is better to less is more?