Many overseas visitors to India are taken aback at the kind of street shopping that they experience.
The touristy parts of the country - Delhi, Agra, Rajasthan - are full of pushy vendors trying to sell them things at downright outrageous prices. In Bombay's Colaba district, I often see street vendors quoting tourists twice or thrice the normal price.
I met an American lady recently, it was her first visit to India. She said to me, "Deepa, when I shop here, I feel so much at a loss...I'm the outsider, and I feel like I have to constantly watch out so I'm not cheated." She was a smart, savvy woman, but she felt almost abused, emotionally as well as financially.
I thought about what she said - and realised that she was experiencing a kind of culture shock.
Any Indian woman will tell you that if you look prosperous, vendors will always quote you a higher price. All of us learn to handle this sort of situation - by watching other women, and of course, by learning from experience. I used to find bargaining very intimidating. But these days when someone quotes me a totally wacky price, I just grin widely and say the Hindi equivalent of "Yeah right, go pull the other one". Then we haggle back and forth a bit, and when the price gets to the point where I think the vendor is making a good margin, I give in. It's all part of the Great Indian Bargaining Game, and it has taken me a while to master it.
So I sat down to explain it to my American friend. I said, shopping in India is a state of mind, a game that you play. To treat this overcharging-bargaining game as a personal insult, or worse, to think of yourself as a victim because this doesn't happen in your country, is just totally missing the point.
I told her she needed to apply a different yardstick when in India. No one was singling her out for extra-harassment...this is how the shopping culture in this country works. Street vendors are not demons - they're just a bunch of fairly poor people trying to get a few extra dollars off anyone who looks like they can afford it. In my MBA school they called this "what the market will bear" pricing.
India is a both a destination and a journey. It has woven its magic for millenia now, on travellers from all parts of the world. It is a complex and rich culture, with so much to offer - but the rules are different. To explore this sort of complexity, you have to step out from the comfort zone of neatly labelled racks and polite checkout greeters. You have to embrace the street shopping and bargaining spirit.
It can be fun, actually. There's the crafty assessment of what something is really worth, the starting position, the bantering conversation and the give-and-take, the testing of each other's mettle, and the final agreement on how one particular shawl fits into the overall cosmic scene of things!
Travel wouldn't be half as interesting if the world was one big Walmart.
The touristy parts of the country - Delhi, Agra, Rajasthan - are full of pushy vendors trying to sell them things at downright outrageous prices. In Bombay's Colaba district, I often see street vendors quoting tourists twice or thrice the normal price.
I met an American lady recently, it was her first visit to India. She said to me, "Deepa, when I shop here, I feel so much at a loss...I'm the outsider, and I feel like I have to constantly watch out so I'm not cheated." She was a smart, savvy woman, but she felt almost abused, emotionally as well as financially.
I thought about what she said - and realised that she was experiencing a kind of culture shock.
Any Indian woman will tell you that if you look prosperous, vendors will always quote you a higher price. All of us learn to handle this sort of situation - by watching other women, and of course, by learning from experience. I used to find bargaining very intimidating. But these days when someone quotes me a totally wacky price, I just grin widely and say the Hindi equivalent of "Yeah right, go pull the other one". Then we haggle back and forth a bit, and when the price gets to the point where I think the vendor is making a good margin, I give in. It's all part of the Great Indian Bargaining Game, and it has taken me a while to master it.
So I sat down to explain it to my American friend. I said, shopping in India is a state of mind, a game that you play. To treat this overcharging-bargaining game as a personal insult, or worse, to think of yourself as a victim because this doesn't happen in your country, is just totally missing the point.
I told her she needed to apply a different yardstick when in India. No one was singling her out for extra-harassment...this is how the shopping culture in this country works. Street vendors are not demons - they're just a bunch of fairly poor people trying to get a few extra dollars off anyone who looks like they can afford it. In my MBA school they called this "what the market will bear" pricing.
India is a both a destination and a journey. It has woven its magic for millenia now, on travellers from all parts of the world. It is a complex and rich culture, with so much to offer - but the rules are different. To explore this sort of complexity, you have to step out from the comfort zone of neatly labelled racks and polite checkout greeters. You have to embrace the street shopping and bargaining spirit.
It can be fun, actually. There's the crafty assessment of what something is really worth, the starting position, the bantering conversation and the give-and-take, the testing of each other's mettle, and the final agreement on how one particular shawl fits into the overall cosmic scene of things!
Travel wouldn't be half as interesting if the world was one big Walmart.
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