Sanjay Kumar, owner of a grocery store at Nageshwar Colony, was dumbfounded when a lady in her 40s bought 30kg of raw cumin from his shop on Tuesday. According to Sanjay, the lady also bought 20kg of black pepper and few other costly spices in the same quantity. The total bill came to around Rs 25,000.
"Earlier, the lady used to do monthly shopping from my shop in the range of Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000," Sanjay said. "So I could not understand why she was purchasing in bulk this time. It all fell into place when she brought out the scrapped notes for paying the bill. I could not refuse taking the cash - after all, I am doing business - so I accepted it," recalled Sanjay.
Necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes, and many housewives are coming up with inventive ways such as this to get rid of their husbands' unaccounted-for cash. The central government has said deposits of over Rs 2.5 lakh in a bank account would attract scrutiny by tax sleuths who would impose a penalty of 200 per cent on the amount deposited if the amount is not reflected in the tax returns. Hence, the abnormal shopping spree.
Many grocers said some women were buying 20 to 30kg spices at a time, while other shopkeepers said housewives were also splurging on things like cosmetics - as long as the shopkeeper is willing to accept the demonetised currency notes.
A homemaker who was shopping at Sanjay's shop justified the splurging.
"If you have Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes lying with you, there is no reason to panic; we can shop with those." she said under strict promise of anonymity for obvious reasons. "A housewife who uses her brain smartly will get over the hurdle by buying necessary stuff for the house. Many shopkeepers are still accepting the scrapped currencies. We just have to identify them."
Dinesh Kumar, a salesman at a cosmetics shop on Boring Road, said in the past few days he got a few women customers who spent abnormal sums of money on make-up items and paid for them through scrapped notes.
"The women bought make-up items in the range of Rs 8,000 to Rs 15,000. One thing I found weird was that they purchased similar make-up items. For example, a lady purchased more than 20 lipsticks of a similar colour," said Dinesh.
Vijay Kumar Singh, a dry fruit shop owner at Nageshwar Colony, said many people, including women, have been coming to his shop asking if they can buy stuff using scrapped notes. "Many said they would buy stuff to round off the figures and so that I need not take the pain of returning change to them. I simply asked them to pay through cheque because I don't want to accept the scrapped notes. I don't support black money and in no way can I help them get rid of their illegal income," said Vijay.
A doctor, who did not wish to be named, said apart from paying advance salaries to his staff, he used scrapped currency notes to purchase groceries and other items. "We have purchased three months' grocery items with scrapped currencies," he said. "I got this idea from my friend who too splurged in shopping to get rid of the excess scrapped currencies with him."
