I’ve returned to Australia permanently. My husband and I are living with my parents in a suburb on the outer edges of Sydney, still made up of small farms and market gardens but with the tide of the expanding city lapping up against it. It’s where I grew up. A major supermarket opened a branch here a few years ago. Even though I could see the size of the site when it was being built, I was still surprised when the completed supermarket was a huge barn of a thing – not the petite glorified shop that I had been expecting.
In the fruit and vegetable section (which soon put paid to the greengrocers that had been in the area for as long as I could remember), there are signs warning customers to ‘look out for grapes’. They’re not just by the apparently insidious grapes, but dotted throughout. I can only imagine there was a costly slip and fall incident. I couldn’t help but think of our local supermarket in Mumbai, which during its many months of renovations had a floor covering that was largely composed of cardboard boxes irregularly duct-taped together, over a rockier topography of wires and power cables. No signs. I guess the risks are lower when almost everyone wears flat sandals of some kind and is used to streets and sidewalks pitted with hazards.
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