Spectator by Seema Goswami: Just doing their duty

Whenever I go past security while travelling on an international route and hit the duty-free area, I am amazed by the cornucopia of goods on offer. Apart from the regulation liquor, chocolates, makeup and perfumes, these days you have every designer brand doing brisk business in bags, clothes, shoes and sunglasses. And as I watch people shopping frantically at what is usually (though not always) the end of their vacation, I can’t help but wonder what drives this spending spree.

Have these people kept money aside specifically for this purpose? Have they researched the goods available at the duty-free stores to make sure that they can find a specific object? Are they just trying to take advantage of tax-free shopping? Or is this a last blast of holiday fun before they go back to the dreary business of everyday living?

Are these purchases last-minute gifts for their loved ones waiting for them at home? And if they are buying gifts, what is the motivation behind it? Are they driven by love, say, for a spouse who they have missed on a business trip? Or is the purchase driven by guilt at leaving a child behind, while they head out on an adults-only holiday? Is the purchase a strategic one, aimed at pleasing a boss who sent them on a company junket? Or are they just ticking off items on a list sent across by a demanding family member?

There was a time in my life when I used to do my fair share of duty-free shopping. There were, of course, the boxes of cigarettes that friends and neighbours would ask for. And in those dark days of yore, when alcohol was not freely available in India, this was always the ideal opportunity to stock up on whiskey, gin or Champagne. I never ever bought stuff for my bosses, but whenever I headed back from a holiday abroad, I would always buy many boxes of chocolate for my staff, only partly motivated by guilt for abandoning them to work while I had a nice little foreign jolly.

But now that almost everything that is available at duty-free is also on sale at the neighbourhood mall, it seems like too much of a palaver to get stuck into shopping at the airport. And frankly, by the time I have negotiated check-in, immigration and security, I am so exhausted that all I want to do is collapse in the lounge with a nice glass of wine. The very thought of browsing through shops, shortlisting things, doing a quick price comparison and then queueing up to pay seems like too much work.

Yet, airports across the world are full of people doing exactly that. And I can’t help but marvel at (and be bemused by) their enthusiasm for duty-free shopping. I can just about get my head around those who are buying bottles of liquor or makeup and perfume. But I cannot for the life of me understand those who are casually picking up big-ticket items such as Hermès and Chanel bags – hardly impulse buys – on their way to the departure gates.

Or maybe I am the one who has got it wrong. Maybe the best way to treat a modern airport is to treat it like a luxury department store. And the right way to recover from queue fatigue is to try a little retail therapy.