Good bargaining skills are a necessity in Asian markets and it's definitely grown into a favorite pasttime for me. I love to wear down those unsuspecting merchants who initially size me up as an ignorant tourist. Sometimes I don't win them over, but when I do, it's an intoxicating victory. So I'm going to start this entry off with a story about the best bargain I've gotten so far on this trip.
I was in Jaipur and needed a new pair of white leggings to go with a dress I bought in Delhi. I walked down the market street one evening looking into each clothing shop, mostly ignoring the men attempting to entice me into their store. Then I saw one young man with thick rimmed glasses who, like every other man, invited me to enter into his shop. This time I did. It's superficial but I stopped only because I thought his glasses were cute.
He didn't have white leggings but he had tan ones I was willing to buy. So we started negotiations. And his initial price? 400 Indian rupees (about $8 USD). I laughed. He clearly didn't have a very high opinion of me. "How much you willing to pay?" he asked to get my baseline. "30 rupees." This time he laughed. At 60 US cents, this was a ridiculous price, even for India.
But 30 rupees was really all I had in my purse so I couldn't go up. It's true, I walked to the market that day with only 60 US cents to my name.
The merchant, Ajit, went down to 350 rupees. I refused. He asked me how much I could pay again and again I told him 30 rupees. I told him this was all the money I had which ofcourse he didn't believe. So he changed tactics and started the process of buttering me up.
He had me try on a sari and take pictures in it "just for fun". I noted the fact that he had many pictures of tourist girls wearing saris on his phone. He also offered me chai and we sat in the shop drinking a cup together. In the course of the conversation, he learned I really did only have 30 rupees on me.
"You are the poorest American I've ever met in my life," he told me during our conversation. Then he said if I came back the next day, he'd give me white leggings for free (he had to go find a pair first because nobody in that market stocked white leggings). Awesome! I went back to the shop the next morning and claimed my prize.
At the Taj Mahal in my new outfit
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I hung out with Ajit a few times after this during my stay in Jaipur. But in the course of our time together, I witnessed a transformation take place in his head I would have preferred not to see. Ultimately, he wanted something from me and it was already made clear I was not going to be a lucrative customer. So, logically, Ajit next tried to pressure me into sleeping with him and on these occasions he would enter into a childish begging mode. I found a little verbal slap on the cheek was usually enough to make him shut up but there were a few times when his fits were so intense, I just had to walk away. And just like a child, he'd always be a lot more cheerful the next day after his anger got a chance to burn itself out.
Still, I was shocked at how forward Ajit was in his pleas for sex. He would never dream of approaching an Indian girl like this. It was clear he had a completely different perspective on where a Western woman's boundaries lied. According to my friend in Delhi, many Indian men are first exposed to Western women through porn movies and this extremely skewed representation ends up coloring their real-life interactions with tourist girls. I can see how this statement is likely true. In fact, I suspect this is true for most men throughout all of Asia and yet it's only in India that I seemed to get propositioned so frequently by people I was not at all familiar with. There is something that feels outwardly repressed and sublimely perverse in these interactions.
Ofcourse, my experiences hanging out with him weren't all bad. Every once in a while, Ajit would do incredibly nice things that left me marveling at the beauty of human nature. It's just that his sweet little heart was oftentimes covered in a thick, gelatinous layer of self-interested malice. At the very least, I can say I was intrigued by the complexity of his character.
And then there's the somewhat far-fetched dream Ajit had of finding a tourist girl who will fall madly in love with him and end up marrying him. This is apparently a common dream among the men of the tourism industry.
A rickshaw driver once told me his own guru - the man who taught him everything he knows about the rickshaw driving business - married an American girl he once drove. He's now living the dream somewhere in Oregon and is the envy of all his friends in India. It's just your typical Cinderella story starring Fat Indian Guy with Burly Black Moustache as Cinderella.
Overall, I think my experience hanging out with Ajit was a good lesson for me on how to better deal with those aggressive Indian men in tourism. Yes, this is a generalization and individuals are always different. But to stay safe, one has to approach every new interaction with some amount of skepticism and it is possible to draw patterns. My advice to any woman travelling to India would be to stay positive when interacting with the local men but keep a safe distance with your words and always always walk away at the point things become a waste of your time. Banter is always fun. After all, you're on vacation and they probably don't have another customer right now. Just remember they're not talking to you for free.
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And for any bargain hunters out there, I want to leave some tips I've learned along the way about how to get the best prices and avoid the scams in India.
- Indian merchants can be very stubborn when dealing with a tourist. Even if a pair of earrings cost them 30 rupees to buy, they will initially ask you to pay 300 rupees and may only go down a measly 50 rupees over the course of the negotiation. It's possible they'll even be so dense as to let you walk away without making a purchase. This is the opposite mentality of China, where the merchant will do whatever it takes to ensure the deal closes at some mutually beneficial price.
If this happens to you, don't despair and don't let their bully tactics make you settle for too high of a price. Go ahead and walk away. In fact, there are probably a few other merchants who were listening in on your conversation and are completely willing to sell the item to you at the price you asked. But they won't approach you until you leave the first vendor out of respect for him. This is also true when bargaining prices for taxis, rickshaws, and hotels.
Random insertion of personal opinion here: I don't think Indian merchants have good business acumen. Some of the decisions they make in their dealings with customers feel completely irrational and even self-destructive. They could learn a thing or two from the Chinese. Just saying..
- You'll always get the best deals if you walk directly into a shop as opposed to being escorted in by a tout or driver. The price you'll pay if you're escorted in will be about 30-40% higher in order to cover their commission. Sometimes they get ~200 rupees just for bringing you into the store.
- In India, you'll find many privately owned tourism offices with signs on the front saying things like "Government Tourist Information Booth". These guys bribed the police and government officials to let them keep the sign up as it's a good way to gain the tourists' trust. You'll know you've walked into one of these kinds of offices if they first offer you a free map of the city and then shift to selling you packages. Ask them whatever questions you want answered and get the hell out of there.
- A common way hotels will try to squeeze more money out of you is by telling you their cheap rooms (usually the dorm rooms) are coincidentally all booked up but they have one room available for such-and-such rupees more. It's possible this may be true but there have been times when I knew they were lying. My personal reaction to this situation would be to call bullshit, walk out, and start looking for other hotels in the neighborhood. Of all the kinds of liars looking to exploit tourists in India, this is the one I can't stand the most and I refuse to do business with a person like this. If you can imagine an angry Asian girl walking the dirt roads with her tiny, Google-branded roller suitcase in tow, you will know what the majority of my life has been like in India.
If you're lucky enough to be dealing with a hotel with an online presence, it's better to book the room you want through agoda, hostelworld, or hostelbookers. The staff will be forced to honor the reservation at the cheaper price and you can avoid the haggling.
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