Grocery Shopping as Cultural Archaeology

Or: How I Learned That Seven Types of Hummus Is Apparently Normal

I still remember my first shopping day-out in London. I had landed the same day from India and wanted to get some everyday stuff. I was told about Asda and it was Asda, where the ‘just-landed’ ‘wide-eyed’ I, went. It took me sometime to understand that the shopping trollies were precious and needed to be acquired by paying one pound. It is also important to mention here that, I didn’t deduct the logic that I will get my one pound back when I put the trolley back. So you can imagine all that was going on in my jet legged head. ‘One pound for borrowing a trolley?’ ‘Where have I landed?’’ "I should have got a month’s grocery from India," followed by an oh! and more lamenting.

The questions didn’t end here. I just wasn’t prepared for the choices I had to make to buy yogurt. There were thirty-seven varieties. I counted. Natural, honey, strawberry, 0% fat, full fat, organic, protein-enhanced, and something called ‘Greek style’ which I'm pretty sure was having an identity crisis. I stood there, paralysed by options, wondering if this was what freedom felt like.

Mumbai grocery shopping happened differently. You woke up, checked what was left in the fridge (usually not much), and headed out into the daily chaos. Three stops minimum: the vegetable vendor who'd argue with you about onion prices, the fish wallah who knew your family's preferences better than you did, and the provision store where everything lived in glass jars and nothing had expiration dates because freshness was a daily gamble anyway.

Here, I (my husband does, tbh) plan my meals a week in advance like a military strategist, because apparently that's what functional fridges allow you to do.

Mumbai: The Daily Drama of Fresh Everything

In Mumbai, grocery shopping wasn't shopping - it was cultural immersion with a side of cardio. You didn't just buy vegetables; you participated in an ancient dance of haggling, examining, rejecting, and eventually settling on produce that met your exacting standards and your vendor's patience levels.

My local vegetable vendor like his father before him, would save the good okra, warn me off the suspicious-looking cauliflower, and throw in extra coriander because my mother had once complimented his wife's sari. This wasn't commerce; it was community.

The fish market was pure sensory overload - vendors shouting prices that changed based on your negotiation skills, the satisfying thwack of prawns being sorted, the art of selecting fish that looked back at you with the right amount of accusatory freshness. You bought what looked good that day, planned dinner around what the market offered, lived according to the rhythm of what was actually in season.

Every trip was an education. Aunties would materialise beside you to offer unsolicited advice about picking the ripest mangoes or identifying whether the vendor was trying to pass off yesterday's spinach as fresh. You learned that grocery shopping required both street smarts and a PhD in produce psychology.

My daughter still sends me photos from market, captioned "Remember when we used to spend two hours buying ingredients for one meal?" It's both nostalgia and gentle mockery - she knows I now buy a week's worth of perfectly uniform vegetables in under thirty minutes, sealed in plastic like they're heading to space.

London: The Archaeology of Organised Efficiency

The Tescos, Asdas, Lidls operate like a small, well-lit country where everything has been catalogued, price-tagged, and arranged according to principles I'm still trying to decode. The international aisle casually stocks ingredients that required pilgrimage-level dedication to find in Mumbai - tahini next to soy sauce next to coconut cream like they've always been neighbours.

My first month involved a lot of confused wandering. Why did tinned tomatoes come in ‘chopped,’ ‘whole plum,’ ‘cherry,’ and ‘passata’ when Mumbai had one type that you either used or didn't? What was the difference between ‘mature cheddar,’ ‘extra mature,’ and ‘vintage’ - was cheese aging like wine now? Why did ready meals need their own refrigerated village, complete with dietary lifestyle categories I'd never heard of? And could someone explain why there were three different aisles dedicated to cleaning products when one bottle of Dettol used to handle everything from floors to feelings?

The weekly shop has become my window into British psychology. People move through these aisles with the sort of purposeful efficiency that suggests they've mastered the art of knowing exactly what they'll want to eat next Thursday. They have trolleys that don't require wrestling matches with wonky wheels. They queue with the patience of people who genuinely believe the system works.

My husband has adapted to this with the enthusiasm of someone who's discovered functional infrastructure. "Look," he'll say, brandishing a perfectly ripe avocado in January, ‘they have everything, all the time.’ This still feels like magic to someone who spent years timing shopping trips around monsoon schedules and festival market closures.

The Great Cultural Translation Project

Working at Flame Tree Publishing, I've started noticing how my colleagues treat food shopping like a solved problem. They mention ‘doing the weekly shop’ with the same casual energy they'd use for ‘checking emails’ or ‘walking the dog.’ Nobody discusses vegetable politics or vendor relationships. Nobody requires three different stops to assemble the components for a single meal.

This efficiency is revolutionary, but it's also oddly anonymous. My Tesco doesn't know I exist beyond my Clubcard number. There's no vendor who asks about my mother's health or remembers that I prefer smaller onions. The trade-off for convenience is the loss of those tiny human connections that made Mumbai shopping feel like community participation rather than solitary resource gathering.

But here's what I've discovered: British supermarkets are accidentally brilliant at cultural education. The ready-meal section is like a course in "What Britain Eats When It Can't Be Bothered" (answer: surprisingly sophisticated pasta dishes and curry that would make my Mumbai friends weep with confusion). The biscuit aisle reveals the profound seriousness with which this country approaches tea accompaniment. The wine section suggests a nation that's given careful thought to pairing grape varieties with weekday emotions.

The Refrigerator Revolution

The real revelation isn't what you can buy - it's what you can keep. In Mumbai, our refrigerator wheezed through humidity like a senior citizen climbing stairs. You bought what you could use immediately because ‘keeping things fresh’ was more aspiration than reality.

Here, my fridge maintains its temperature with the dedication of a British civil servant. I can buy salad on Sunday and it'll still be crisp on Wednesday. This has fundamentally altered my relationship with meal planning, food waste, and the concept of having backup ingredients just sitting around waiting to be useful.

My son has adapted to this abundance with the pragmatism of someone who's never known scarcity. "We're out of milk," he'll announce, as if this represents a minor scheduling inconvenience rather than an immediate crisis requiring strategic intervention. London has made him casual about food availability in ways that still make my Mumbai-trained anxiety twitch.

Learning the Local Language

Each supermarket has its own personality, and I'm slowly learning to read them. Waitrose whispers ‘we're judging your trolley contents’ with its artisanal everything and price points that suggest food is a luxury hobby. Iceland shouts ‘practical solutions for practical people’ with freezer sections that could supply a small arctic expedition. Sainsbury's sits somewhere in the middle, like the diplomatic answer to ‘where shall we shop?’

But Asda has become my anthropological headquarters. It's where I've learned that British people buy enormous quantities of milk, treat tea bags like a strategic resource, and maintain surprisingly strong opinions about which brand of baked beans counts as acceptable. The self-checkout machines have taught me patience, humility, and several creative approaches to swearing under my breath.

The International Aisle: A United Nations of Nostalgia

The international section deserves its own sociological study. It's where homesickness takes physical form - rows of coconut milk, curry powder, and rice varieties that promise to recreate the tastes of somewhere else. I've watched other immigrants navigate these aisles with the careful attention of archaeologists examining precious artefacts.

There's something beautifully democratic about finding Mexican tortillas, Italian pastas, Indian spices, and Chinese sauces sharing shelf space like they've sorted out centuries of international relations through strategic product placement. It's globalisation in miniature, capitalism's accidental gift to cultural preservation.

Globalisation has complicated the geography of authenticity in ways that would give philosophers headaches.

Two Different Languages of Abundance

Mumbai's abundance was about variety, seasonality, and the daily ritual of choosing. London's abundance is about availability, preservation, and the weekly ritual of planning. Both systems work, but they produce completely different relationships with food, time, and community.

I miss the daily conversations with vendors who treated vegetable selection as a collaborative art form. But I appreciate being able to buy olive oil without requiring a small loan, and having access to ingredients that can transform a weeknight dinner from survival ration to actual meal.

My weekly Asda trips have become meditation sessions on cultural adaptation. I push my wonky-wheel-free trolley through aisles of impossible plenty, occasionally pausing to photograph the hummus selection for friends back home, and marvelling at how grocery shopping can be both completely ordinary and utterly revolutionary depending on where you learned to do it.

The real victory isn't that I've mastered British supermarket culture - it's that I've learned to carry both languages of shopping. I can plan a week ahead and improvise with whatever looks good. I can appreciate the efficiency of predictable availability and the adventure of daily food discovery.

Though I still have mild panic attacks in the cereal aisle. Some cultural translations require more work than others.