|
Being a member of the tourist caste, part II: parting with your money when you want to! |
|
|
I discovered that the rules for shopping in India are quite different from those at home, and the difference does not stop at flexible pricing. I am no expert on silks or jewellery for example, but I do know a good painting from a bad one, and I wanted to buy a good one. When someone hands me a magnifying glass to examine details on a painting that a blind bat could see with the naked eye, I know I am being taken for a ride - or am I? I soon found that in any given tourist shop it is necessary to insist if you want to be shown anything worth having. First you will be shown a few hundred pieces of rubbish. If you buy one of these all well and good. I could not say what the correct attitude is if you want to see something else, but my approach was to point out the deficiencies of the merchandise in view and ask to be shown something of better quality. That's how I eventually ended up with an acceptable Nepalese painting that had been pinned up on the wall behind the salesmen and a frankly good Rajasthani miniature that had been locked in a drawer. Even getting to see either was the result of half an hour of negotiation, before starting to discuss the price. Of course the salesperson knows the quality of the merchandise just as well as you hopefully do, and will always play up whatever value it has. I contented myself with asking for a discount on the price and usually got about 10 to 20% off no argument, which was a tactic I learned from an Indian friend. I suspect the price on really good items is not a flexible as many people imagine. If you try to bargain too low, you will just be offered a piece of lower quality. For items that are basically throwaway the price may begin very inflated and be more flexible. Apart from paintings, I wanted to buy some very nice Indian clothing, and this turned out to be quite difficult. Most shops that tourist get taken contain an assortment of woodcarvings and paintings, some jewellery, some bedspreads and table cloths, and some poorly cut imitation Western clothes that are admittedly made out of silk, hand printed cottom or cashmire. What they do not contain is saris, salwar kameezes or other Indian costumes. I eventually did manage to solve this problem. Although I met very few women in my time in India, I did make one friend and begged her to take me shopping. Quite a role reversal! She took me to a very posh shop that I had heard of, and which I must say she didn't approve of much. This shop sells sewn clothing such as salwar kameezes and Rajasthani type skirts and tunics. All the dresses are wrapped in plastic so you cannot just go and browse through them as we can at home. You have to either be able to give some description of what you want or else you can just say 'show me some things'. I found it very hard at first to cope with this system, especially when dozens of dresses were unpacked for my scrutiny, while the eyes of three or four other people scrutinised me for my reactions. In fact it was so embarassing, that I still laugh to think of it. I eventually ended up with a dress vastly more beautiful than any other I have ever owned, and I only wish that I had got married after my trip to India, because I could have worn it on my wedding day. Next my friend took me to a shop she did approve of to buy a sari. It was a very different kind of shop but the procedure was similar, a good 50 saris were unpacked and tossed over the table practically faster than I could look at them. I couldn't stop thinking about how they would have to pack them all up again and kept begging my friend to stop them from showing me anything else in pink. It was incredibly hard to get them to stop unpacking saris so that I could think about the ones they had already unpacked. The one I chose was blue-green with hand embroidery and extremely pretty. Fortunately for me, I know at least a dozen ways of tying it - as several kinds of dress, trousers, shorts or long skirt. Mike's main buying experience concerned the inlaid marble plates and coasters we got in Agra. This seems a good moment to point out that really nice things in India are not cheap as some people seem to hope, they are actually expensive. The difference is that in the West they would be so out of reach as to not be worth thinking about. Mike knew he wanted his inlaid marble before he got to India, but he never made up his mind wether he could afford it until he actually got to Agra. That is when we spent a good hour and a half in the shop in negotiation over what we were willing to pay and what they were willing to give us in exchange for that amount. No, they didn't have it in stock, so we also had to decide wether to take the risk of paying and having the plates and coasters shipped to us. Many people would say that this is highly inadvisable, but in the end, leaning on an interwoven web of reputations and relationships, we went ahead and did it. The goods arrived a couple of months later in perfect condition, packed inside a crate 10 times as big as they were. It took Mike a full day and a variety of tools to break into it, and he was so impressed, he wanted to photograph the packing for posterity. So ended our holiday in India.... |