The other day, I had to go to Lajpat Nagar to buy 16 identical tie-dyed scarves for a school event. At the best of times, I'm not a fan of this crowded market where designer knock-offs sell as briskly as plates of the local speciality, Chinese chaat. The consolation was that I had to go on a Monday evening, the day the market is supposedly closed for business and relatively less populated. I found that this gave the shop assistants in the scarf store more time than usual to chat, and I learnt that in India, or Delhi at least, there was a weapon of mass destruction that made grown men (at least in Lajpat Nagar) quake with fear.
It all began when I had to go to the basement of the shop to select the scarves. A leaking air-conditioner had left hardly any dry floor to stand on, and a portly woman shoved me into the puddle as she swept past me, without a word of apology. She rejected the huge variety of 'crape' fabric she had asked for, derided the shop owner for keeping inferior merchandise and plonked herself on a stool that she practically pulled out from under the salesman's backside. I watched as the salesman pulled out scarves for me, while she minutely examined (and found flaws) in over a dozen fabrics. Then she said, "What an inhospitable lot you all are! I've been here for hours, and no one's even offered me a cup of tea!" She bullybargained and eventually paid half of her billed amount, and left.
The three salesmen rallied around after she left. "Madamji, we have to deal with such women every day," one of them told me. It was as if a dam had burst. Each tried to top the other's tales of terrible customers. They told me, women shoppers often behaved as if it were their birthright to push, shove and trample on people's toes. "They take pictures of our fabrics and go to other shops to see if they can get them cheaper," said one. "They bargain so hard that getting them to pay anything is almost like sucking the blood back from a mosquito," said another. "Our neighbouring shop had to shut down its readymade business because women would sneakily photograph their clothes and get them made by their backyard tailors," griped the third.
It seemed like a case of pots and kettles calling each other black, I said. Didn't they and everyone else in this salwar-kameez mecca, knock off designer labels and sell them for a fraction of their cost? This shop even had the exact fabrics used by pret readymade labels along with their catalogues for easy reference. The salesmen were aghast. They were simply poor people making a living, they defended. Rich customers with their fat purses didn't have the same excuse, they said. "Anyway, what's worse than the bargaining is the way women in this market behave while shopping," said the shop owner. "They demand tea, chairs and discounts like they're doing us a favour by giving us their custom."
As I walked out with my shopping bag, I remembered the stories my grandmother had told me about the almost ritualised relationship families of yore used to have with vendors. It was a far cry from the aggressive interactions I witnessed in Lajpat Nagar… or was it? Perhaps this pushy give and take made the shopping experience more personal, enjoyable even, ensuring that as long as there are brash hunters of bargains, the beleaguered salesmen of Lajpat Nagar wouldn't lose their custom to glitzy modern shopping malls.
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