I awake feeling a little hungover. I have the comfort of a room for myself as Meg and Dave are still in Chandigarh and have a lie in watching old 20/20 cricket matches on ESPN. At about 11, I go out to explore our surroundings. I am followed down the road by a hawker who, once I establish that I don’t want a watch or any shoes, offers me hash. Wondering how expensive it is in India I ask him for a price, but this is a mistake as it gives him a scent of a sale and I have to get into a tuk tuk to escape.
The tuk tuk takes me to an arts & craft bazaar for only 20 rupees. The Lonely Planet warns about these as the drivers are paid commissions by the bazaar owners, but I go anyway as I don’t really know where to go. I humour a carpet seller that I might pay £1000 for one of his carpets (the price drops quickly when I say that I will come back later). Fairly forcibly, I extract myself from the situation, although I do buy some nice pashminas for £20 from another stall holder. In reality, I could probably have bought the same pashminas for £5 on Reading High Street.
The tuk tuk driver who has taken me there was still waiting, and I get him to take me to Connaught Place market, the big circle in the middle of maps of Delhi. Later, I get into another tuk tuk whose driver is saying he will drive to an arts bazaar for 20 rupees. I get in, but only because I know the bazaar is walking distance to the hotel. I go back into the bazaar for a few seconds and sneak out without the tuk tuk driver noticing.
At Connaught Place, I am ostensibly looking for the new Muse CD to stop Meg going on about how she needs to have it, but end up being harassed, often successfully, into buying wide assortment of items including an MP3 player, an imitation iPhone (my phone having packed up in Pakistan, though I don’t exactly need it out here), and a camera. I also buy a Punjab suit for £50, which at time I thought was not a bad price. The falseness of this feeling is confirmed and rubbed in by John, who I later find out has bought a Punjab suit for £5, having secured this deal by asking the wife of the stall holder what she would say to her husband if he had paid as much as the stall holder was asking for on the suit. I would say that mine was better material than his, although I can think of no likely scenarios in which I would wear it.
Actually, there were a lot of clothes in the bazaar that appealed to me and I still think of a particularly colourful jacket that would have been useful in Nepal that I didn’t buy because, the stall holder having followed me to the ATM for me to get the necessary cash, I found that I had already withdrawn and spent my daily limit on my credit card. It probably wouldn’t have fit into my rucksack anyway.
Looking for the CD, I find myself in a shop that also sold DVDs. Conversing with the shop owner, he offers me some under the counter goods. I have never been a fan of porn, finding it overly gynaecological, but in the name of cultural exploration I decided to see what an Indian porn film consisted of, so I go with him to his backroom. However, being cornered in a cupboard by an Indian salesman is never a wise position to take and I am only able to extract myself by buying about eight DVDs, most of which are American anyway. This is a kind of victory because, even though I only wanted one, he wanted to sell me twenty, so at least I was able to negotiate downwards by over 50%. However, I don’t even have any facility for watching these, and I don’t particularly want to be carrying them over borders for customs officials to inspect.
All told, I spend £250 on my shopping spree, the lesson being that you should never go shopping in Delhi with a hangover. And I never did find the Muse CD.
I did however find my ears being cleaned by a man with a sharp hooked tool, having been escorted to him by a boy I had bought a book from, without me being sure what I was being escorted towards. This may seem unwise, but my ears had been feeling clogged up and I wasn’t sure that it would be much better if I went to a hospital. The man successfully extracts a big clump of ear wax from one ear, although on reflection I am not entirely sure he hadn’t surreptitiously implanted it in the first place. He then shows me an old note book full of handwritten (in English) eulogies to his work, and saying what a bargain it was at 800 Rupees (we hadn’t yet discussed price). I didn’t think it was such a bargain in the context, and only give him 200, but not without protest on his part. He doesn’t seem too displeased when I finally hand over the money though.
The evening is spent on the roof again with John, Tracy, Brian and Laurie again, as well as Meg and Dave, who have arrived from Chandigarh.
No comments:
Post a Comment