No thank you, I prefer being at home.

My friends always coax me to come out of my home during the weekends for a movie at the mall, or for lunch somewhere in any of the fastfood joints that reside there. Strangely, as excited as I sound when the plan is in its nascent stages on a Thursday afternoon, all the excitement seeps away when Friday evening announces its presence. By then all I would love to do in the weekend would be to curl up in the couch, and read a book, or watch television.

This probably has been one of the reasons why I am still single. It takes enormous amount of willpower to get out of bed on a Saturday, to go out for shopping or a movie in a mall that is bursting at the seams. Ask every young couple of their plans for the weekend on a Friday evening, and they would excitedly list the places they intend to visit, the movies they plan to watch, and the restaurants they are dying to try out. You see, in the age of internet and door delivery of restaurant food I just find going out for shopping and thronging at movie halls a waste of time.  Sure, online retail sites never give us a chance to bargain, but I was never much of a bargainer. Ask any auto driver in Chennai or a hawker in Moore Market and he would list me as one of his favorite customers for the same reason.

When a plan with friends is made on a weekend get together, the first image that comes to my mind is this:

  

Once the plan is finalized with the “Where” and “When” decided, and every one disperses to their homes, I end up thinking of the How?

How do I intend to meet this lovely bunch of people at the decided place?

And then the answer flashes before my eyes.

Haven’t you seen how crowded the streets are? People are everywhere. They are down at the mall, in cafes, in restaurants, in movie theatres, you go to the beach and they are there too. The only uninhabited place is the space, but that won’t be like that for long. In the near future earthlings might visit Mars over the weekend for a quick getaway from their nagging bosses at Earth, the women might visit Venus to kick back and relax at their spas and salons that Green Trends and Naturals would have opened there. If they can open one at a place like Avadi, there is nothing that could stop them from opening one in Venus.

Traces of the DNA of the Early Man–the Hunter-Gatherer type still exist in our cells, what else could explain the reason behind scores of men and women bustling down crowded streets and avenues, looking around for deals to grab and items to shop? 

If you think about it, this whole social ritual of shopping is a more evolved version of hunting and gathering. In the Stone Age, man used to hunt for exotic items to please his lady that would help him win her heart and eventually lead him to do the Ooga Booga with her. He would be out for days on a hunting expedition, in search of exotic things he could find to please his lady. They would range from the tusks of a walrus, to the fur of a woolly mammoth–anything that would catch his lady’s eye. The more scars and bruises he got in his quest, the more impressed would the woman be, bargaining used to be more violent and bloodied those days with either the hunted being a victim of a club smashing down their skull, or the hunter being mauled by the vicious animal.

But now in the modern era, our quest of hunting and gathering of commodities leaves us bruised and battered of a different kind­–financially, that is.

People often label me as dull, a bore and a spoil sport because I never go out to meet friends, and instead lock myself in the confines of my abode, but then I don’t see the point in why I have to meet a bunch of people by going through this:

 

When I can be at home and actually do this: