Pizza cutters and time travel at a warehouse sale
In the last two weeks, I have been to a warehouse in Al Quoz three times. The place sends me back in time. It’s massive. There is no air conditioning to speak of, no sliding doors, no beautifully done up counters or prices written with chalk on slate. It’s not fancy. The diversity of stuff on sale is a feat. I saw TVs, coffee grinders, lunchboxes, perfumes, industrial sized food warmers, gigantic steel receptacles (for boiling 10,000 litres of milk, if you want), water dispensers, shirts, shoes, backpacks, tiny tea cups Arabic style, thermoses, a selection of table runners labelled ‘rannur’ — so sweet! (The tag read: ‘WOW! WAS 75/- Rannur 16x72 NOW 45/-). I was awed. This was/is a universe of everything you could need. Kitchen stuff: cutlery, crockery, dustbins from this Italian brand, the USP of which is that the lids don’t slam shut but incline to a close in noiseless degrees. I could have clapped.
The beauty of these wholesale sales is that no one’s bothered about frills, presentation, being attentive. The staff wears uniform, but that’s it. No one’s selling you anything. Take it or leave it. One salesman was adjusting the frequency of a radio. I bought a bin (the noiseless one) from a Pathan who didn’t even look up. It’s such a change from the home and kitchen stores in malls, and not only because of the magnificent slashed prices. I know they’re just doing their job, but to be left alone by sales-folks is an underrated bliss.
My colleague Roopa tipped me off about the sale at this place when I asked her where I should go looking for certain kitchen essentials. I owe her.
The promise of 50-70 per cent off brings out a primal reaction in most deal seekers. And while there is nothing like the satisfaction of owning a ceramic pan
There are coolers every few yards. The ceilings are high and made of tin. There is no highbrow concept of a display window at a quarter of the price than the one displayed at a plush home store at nearby Mall of the Emirates, what kept me coming back — and bringing along friends — was the trippy ambience. A sense of time travel, plastic trolleys (!) — an unusually long line of red and gray ones, wheelbarrow-dimension trolleys, lined up at the entrance under fairy lights, as if they’re waiting to buy a lottery ticket. You don’t see that generation of trolleys any more in cities like Dubai. Imagine, in this day of iPhone Xs, you suddenly spot one of those brick-like handsets with antennae — Motorolas circa 1995. Pushing one of those, you could be fodder for a surrealist painter.
There are coolers every few yards. The ceilings are high and made of tin. There is no highbrow concept of a display window. I was reminded of Khurja, a small city in northern India, I hadn’t thought of in years, and where as a kid I was taken to a ceramic factory and was bitten by a love of blue glaze pottery.
The sale on at the AA Sons warehouse (next to Brands for Less, kind of opposite the big Lulu in Barsha) accounts for my three visits. I can’t always anticipate in the first visit what I need, or might need in future, or what would make a good present for someone three months down the line, basically what I should hoard.
I stocked up on a load of glassware. And among other things, I now have a pizza cutter and a melon baller that I don’t really need and which I might use three times in my life, if even. And yet, I might still go back, if not to buy anything, just for that feeling of being lost in a high-ceilinged hangar of domesticity.
— nivriti@khaleejtimes.com