Lost in Walmart

A person from a village in southern India was introduced to an Arkansas area Walmart as a sociological experiment. 


This subject we shall call Muthukodi, had never seen a formal store of any kind let alone a Walmart as he whiled away his adolescent years running after butterflies and goats in the village pasture.


Hidden cameras at the Walmart tracked his every move and the researchers at the Harvard School of Medicine were disturbed to know that their subject once introduced at the entrance had not returned back for over three months.


As the taped events reveal Muthukodi on entering was taken aback by the bright lights and the bustle of humanity with what appeared to be large metallic wheeled contraptions wandering all over and at first went into a catatonic state that lasted a day.  He was slumped right by the greeter in blue vest, about a yard away from the massive steel carts that clanged away into the cavernous space to satiate the needs and urges of those acclimated to shopping there.


On coming to on day 2 he was hit by the stench of fries coming from the McDonald's that had been housed within the Walmart and could not compute the meaning of the immobile plastic clown sitting on a bench oblivious to the hustle.  As he tapped the clown to see if he was awake he got greeted by the greeter in a language he did not understand.  He did not know what to make of this Asian (which to him was a species never before seen) septuagenarian with sad eyes mumbling something to him.


He chose to finally ignore this person and dragged himself in whereupon due to the onset of Halloween phenom (later in October) he found himself staring at ghoulish imagery that threw him off his rocker- again.


When he came out of his latest fright there were several paramedics working on him (all part of the study) giving him IV fluids to wake up.  Suddenly he woke and had to use the restroom - so he decided to do it behind what looked like grass stalks - turns out they were merely part of the Thanksgiving decorations.  Oh what the heck - like the pumpkins would mind.


This routine lasted a few months the tapes reveal where any thing that resembled packaged items appeared to be an item of curiosity.  It is now revealed that he spent an entire week watching television reruns of 'Jerry Springer's guests and their antics' inspite of not being aware of what was being said.  That this Walmart was showing this item was itself noteworthy in the south; given it resembled the day in the life for many locals.  Whenever they showed baseball on other screens he would get particularly excited and wondered why no one else seemed to be paying any attention.


He eventually stumbled on the restrooms in the back and ended up catching a good nap in the dark interior for another couple days.  Somewhere between the paint store and cookies aisle he was able to figure out some snacks that could be consumed and make him happy.  It was these snacks that he consumed in the women's restroom - it was later learnt through cloud based analytics and other hi funds algos that he liked the pictogram on the door so he had chosen it as his rest area.


Whenever he tried approaching other folks to ask for something, some just turned and ran while some older ladies tried to engage him in small talk and got nowhere.  Local police were told by the research teams to not interfere with his goings on.


One even tried to convert him to a new cult that was taking shape as an offshoot of the local Baptist community.  Muthukodi was not impressed.  He did take the ballpoint pen they offered and went off to draw some cows.  Later he moved into the tire center and could not get enough of the new tire smell where he spent a few weeks admiring the grooves on the new items.  The annoying service appointment announcements kept disturbing him and he showed his disgust by throwing large crowbars at the ceiling speakers.


Once he caused a major fire when some chemicals in the aisle next to the tires spilled its contents and he chose to light up a joint since all this new stuff was causing him to lose it.  Shortly after this the scientist teams decided to pull the plug on this experiment but by then Muthukodi had found some cozy space in the trunk of a Yukon that came for an oil change and drove off without anyone being any the wiser.