BANGALORE: A lot of women these days have a habit of referring to shopping as retail therapy. Modern culture describes shopping (for a woman) as less of a responsibility, and more of a de-stressing exercise. This cannot be more wrong in the case of Bangalore and the woes of it's female populace. You're in the middle of buying some clothes for an occasion as special as your sister's wedding when suddenly, you have an urgent need to use the restroom. You look around frantically but you can’t see a bathroom anywhere. Where do you go? Evania Christine Navya, a student of Mount Carmel College faced a similar scenario quite recently. "We don't have the benefit of being able to use the streets as a public restroom as men often do," she explains. "The only option we do have is to visit the closest restaurant or any facility with a bathroom!"Saaniya Zaveri, a student from Mumbai thinks that shopkeepers are unfair when it comes to prices. “I’m charged `400 for a bag that my friends got for `300, just because I'm from out of town.” Saaniya tries to bargain but fails miserably as she doesn’t know the local language. “It’s really hard sometimes without someone to translate,” says Michele Gérard, a tourist from France. “Because I don’t understand, I can’t bargain and end up paying whatever the store keeper asks.”“Lack of proper footpaths,” says Lavina Nagpal, from St. Joseph’s College of Commerce, “It’s a problem everyone faces but men can find their way around. It’s much harder for women especially when it gets late in the day.” She suggests that the BBMP or the Brigade Association do something about this so that it’s safer for women late at night. Anjalee Menon echoes the same sentiment when she says, “The footpaths are really bad. The already narrow roads in the city, coupled with the huge volume of cars and bikes leads to a nightmare for pedestrians since most of the vehicles are half parked on the pavements.” Anjalee, who likes shopping with her grandmother on Commercial Street, agrees that this is a huge inconvenience and something should be done to fix this.And the pedestrians aren't the only ones who have a problem with this. If you're one of the "more fortunate" owners of those cars and bikes, where on earth did you go and park your vehicle? That’s right, you parked it nearly a kilometre away because you couldn’t find a proper parking place. “I hate shopping because of this. I need to park my car at the end of Church Street just so I can go to Tibetian Plaza for something my daughters want,” says Geetha Samuels, graphic designer. “It is a real pain to park my car without anyone’s help and if the guy does come to help while I’m taking it out, he demands that I pay him. It's like a catch-22 situation! Why would I pay him?” she questions. Geetha thinks there should be a better system of collecting the parking fee.What’s worse than walking back to your car parked a kilometre away? Using public transport to get back home. “They see the shopping bags and the names of the stores and then decide how much to charge us,” says Meghana Basavaraju about the auto drivers. Kshitija Jayanth agrees with Meghana and adds, “It's improvised highway robbery. We live on Tumkur road and it’s really hard to travel by bus at night. It takes nearly two hours to get home.” So they take autos home and pay even more than the usually exorbitant rates demanded by our fine auto-driving fraternity.Swetta Rao, Channel Manager at Radiowallla sums up everything by saying “no surplus sizes, budgeted shopping impossible in branded clothing stores and no quality in affordable stores, bad restrooms and horrible parking."
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