Avoiding brands
For the past two years, I have been consciously avoiding brands.
Call it resistance, call it an experiment, call it heresy, or call it capitalist suicide. Call it what you will.
To me, it means something completely different.
Its the conscious choice of quality over quantity.
Its the juicy home-grown tomato, full of nutrition to the supermarket tomato optimized with a thick-skin for logistics, bland in taste and devoid of nutrients.
Its locally sourced thin cotton material to the polyester blended retail clothes that stink in the Indian summer.
Its the smile on my tailor's face when she sees me wearing the shirt she made for me, along with slight disdain for her son who refuses to wear what she stitches. Not a saleswoman with an engineered smile, or worse, the whirring of the scroll wheel on the mouse as I scroll for products to purchase.
Its the farm where the Mudhol hounds come to me for affection with battle scars from hunting deer. Its the cows and calves that seem to have a mind of their own and couldn't care less that we own them. Not the city, full of unhappy people, the tiredness showing in their eyes. Their disdain for life inflicted on everyone around them, their greed hollowing them out from the inside as they chase the shiniest (dullest) of objects with blind desire.
Its my cozy terrace garden, teeming with life. Butterflies, Damsel Flies and beatles which seem to have a sense of duty without anyone directing them. Bees that pollinate without discrimination, plants that reward you with abundance and ask for so little in return. A little corner that tells you that the most beautiful beings of the earth give more than they get.
The quality of this world is infinite. The quantity, finite.
The materialists push hard to prove otherwise, but quality, she keeps showing up, trying to remind us of her beauty.
All we have to do is look, and choose.