26th September 2009
Second day in Jaipur. The second of three days. One day before I board the train back to Chennai. Which means it is the 11th day of my current tour.
Now, I am not much of a shopping person. I may take some time to decide on brands, and I may spend a few moments weighing the costs versus the benefits of two different offerings, but comparing one design versus the other, one colour versus twenty seven other is not my kind of thing.
But then, sometimes, you have to bite the bullet. Slowly. Surely. Painfully. Rajnikant has it easy when he catches bullets with his teeth on screen; its over in a jiffy.
My mom has been celebrating the fact that I am on tour to locations as exotic as Jaipur and Jodhpur. She expects me to come back leading a camel caravan loaded with whatever stuff they sell by the camel load to tourists. Now, I know my duties as a person on official tour, and did a quick recee of the local forts in whatever daylight was left over after seeing customers; ate local food in local restaurants, and did my bit for the economy by hiring local autorickshaws at loot rates. I visited some convenient corners of Jodhpur, and bought bangles, and the locally made puppets for the display rack at home. There is only so much I can pack into the one bag I have brought with me on this trip. And so I planned to stay off the tourist shopping circuit in Jaipur.
But fate and Mom deemed otherwise. She calls me up as I am strolling the bazaar after visiting the Albert Hall Museum. Till then, I was quite immune to the glitz and sparkle of the multi hued wares and the call of the salesman. But the call changed everything. There she was , pleading and cajoling and mothering me into picking up something (either a dress top or a cushion cover or dupatta) with all the embroidery and mirror work.. so cute. After all, she couldn’t come to Rajasthan, and I was there. Finally, naujawaan and free willed adult I may fancy myself to be, but I entered a shop where there was all the handi-crafty looking fabrics hanging from the walls and ceiling. The salesmen were two young men, and I think, experienced as they were in selling all this, they knew me for the sucker I was.
They offered me a seat, and started pulling out sarees. I said I didn’t want sarees. I wanted something decorative. One of them hollered, and a third salesman apparated, seemingly from between two closely packed stacks of sarees. He was duly instructed to bring cushion covers, which he pulled out from the same closely packed stacks of fabric. And in a moment were spread out before me what were assuredly the best designs in cushion covers at the best prices. The same things were available in handicraft showrooms for triple the price for foreigners. But here, the samaritan salesmen sold it at one third those rates.
The dazzle of multicoloured embroidery in pink and purple and off white and red and blue and brown did it. They brought back long suppressed memories. Of my boyhood. Of the time I was a reluctant hostage in a saree shop when my mom bought sarees. Of yards and yards of sarees on counter tops laid out for my mother’s inspection. Of endless minutes spent as she contemplated the reds and the blues and the greens and the purples as the salesmen stood patiently, and pulled out more saree boxes that divulged even more sarees. It was a battle of wits and wills between Mom and salesman. One, convinced that she could outlast a whole shopful of sarees without being adequately satisfied that there was a saree worth purchasing; and the other, that the infinite vastness of his store’s inventory would definitely yield not one but ten that would break the customer’s resolve, and make her buy atleast two. And then, there was me in the corner, unwilling hostage, forced to accompany Mom on this trip for some reason. I would sit, stare, contemplate the infinite sarees. Rue the fact that I was close to missing another episode of He-Man or G I Joe. In those days of Doordarshan, a program was aired once a week, with no repeat telecasts. An episode lost was lost forever. I would try to be helpful, suggesting that the green one was nice, or the mustard yellow one was definitely yuck. Yes, but do you have any more sarees, with better designs..? Yes madam, in a moment… and out would come yet another box, and a dozen more sarees…. Another hour of slow trauma…..
Back to the present: there were about seven cushion covers in as many colours and as many designs spread out before me. I was in a mind-jam. Couldn’t decide between the mauve and the vermillion covers. Only a hundred rupees each.. after all, look at the painstaking work that has gone into it.. and remember, we are not charging you five hundred like the showroom wallahs do to foreigners. Then they befuddled me a bit more by bringing out covers in sets of five, for five hundred rupees. Ah, advantage me; five covers are more difficult to pack into an already full bag, hence it will be single cushion covers. Now they bring the game to another level, bringing out the wall hangings. One meter lengths of cloth, that have no purpose of existence other than to hang from a wall. Of course, there has been elaborate embroidery done on them, plus tourists….Now, this was playing unfair. Even my mom, when she asked for sarees, got sarees, and not sarees AND bed sheets. But they had taken the game to a new level. But one thing that I had learnt from all those lessons of yore is that perseverance pays. Somewhere, mom had to give in to my whining and come back home, albeit empty handed. And I stuck to cushion covers. They agreed that cushion covers were a good choice, but I should also relook at the blue one. And the yellow one. But I had made my selection, and shortlisted the mauve and vermillion. I am proud of the fact that I had made a choice within five minutes of the pieces hitting the display area. And I stuck to them.
I think the sales guys were a bit miffed at a patent shopping sucker resisting their persuasive charms. They pulled out yet another astra, and threw gents kurtas on top of the wall hangings. Short ones sir, like T shirt. Only hundred rupees sir, best quality. But my resistance was fiercer. No kurtas thank you. I returned their serve with a powerful volley. Threw back the bargain gambit at them, to prove that I was no complete green horn. Now, lets be serious, and you tell me the real price. Two hundred only sir, all fixed rate only. After all..blah..showroom..blah..foreigner..3X prices..blah…labour input…blah. .. No, seriously, the real selling price. I’ll give you one fifty. Oh No sir..(two more iterations of previous dialog).
And so I walked out of the shop with two cushion covers for two hundred rupees. I know, I suck at bargaining.
The salesguys also took it as a personal affront that a pure sucker had walked out of the shop with only two hundred worth of shopping. So the lead guy threw in the final gambit. Sir, those puppets.. the ones you were looking at.. you take them for three hundred.
No sir, no puppets. Don’t want them, for any price. I turn around.
Arre sir, two fifty, final offer sir.
No sir, don’t want any puppets. Cant fit them into my bag..
Sir… ..
And I walk away. I have survived yet another shopping expedition.
