Sanjay-Ji's Confectionary: The Little Things

Let's be upfront about this: I'm not a particularly diligent blogger. One thing I've been remiss about  (and I gather there are several things) is the complete absence of characters in the telling of my story; partly this has been because too often the relationships I build here are fleeting and brief, and partly because some things just don't translate to the page well.  We often take for granted the recurrent pleasantries we exchange with the people who exist on the periphery of our lives. Taken as instances,  like so many frames cut from a reel, the moments we share with such people seem utterly mundane—apparently beneath the effort of retelling. Yet, when considered collectively the minutiae of our social worlds is sometimes revealed as a coherent tale that's simply been written by the smallest of chapters. So, having made a New Year's resolution to do better than two entries a month and to include both photographs and characters more frequently, today I start with the latter. Let me tell you about a man named Sanjay.

In fact, it is much more common for me to refer to him as 'Sanjay-ji'; "ji" being an honorific in Hindi that is applied when speaking with respect to someone who is older than yourself or above you in status. While Sanjay is certainly older than I, by the standard purview  in India very few people are of higher status than I simply because I'm a white male. Luckily, such things are as often as not a matter of opinion, and to that end let me be absolutely clear on the matter: to those of us who know him, even though we may on occasion fail to use the honorific, he is quite sincerely Sanjay-ji. He runs (and I believe owns) a local grocery. By the standards of McLeod it's a fairly large grocery, which means that seven people can comfortably fit inside it and still have some space to move around. To be precise, his shop is more of a confectionary that's got sundry goods as well. So, my incurable sweet tooth and the extra mileage ones gets from the dollar when it's magically transformed to rupees left little chance of my path failing to cross Sanjay's; yet, it's loyalty, now, much more than selection or price or calories that leads me back to his little shop on Temple Road.

He has an easy smile and a quite manner, and he always seems to be smirking with the patient grin of a man who's had the universe figured out for some time now but continues to be curious about why everyone else has failed to do so. One of the consequences of the extreme gender roles in India is that your average Indian man is exuberantly willing to provide ample advice on any topic at all that you might be interested in, or indeed were not interested in but were unfortunately patient enough to listen to them expound upon. I haven't fully understood the phenomenon, but my sense of the matter is that being seen to give advice not only demonstrates knowledgeability, but also authority—status—in a way we wouldn't recognize at home. Perhaps because, for us, education is something the majority of us did whether we liked it or not, whereas here having education is a much more salient indicator of your relative economic position because if you're too low on the economic ladder you quite possibly won't get to have any. Moreover, the higher the status of the person to whom your advice is given, the higher your own status becomes as a function of the value of your advice relative to the status of the one who's taking it. You'll probably want to read that sentence again, because it's exactly as complicated as it sounds. Being white, male and North American, then, means that your average Indian male is simply bursting with the will to tell me anything at all about absolutely everything and to go on doing it for as long as I can sustain the appearance of being interested. What I absolutely love about Sanjay is his complete failure to do this to, or more specifically, at me.

I visit his shop almost daily, and it's difficult to describe exactly what it's like to experience his greeting; his warmth and gentleness are enough to generate a pervasive sense of the sublime, which is a bizarre feeling to have when popping in for a bag of chips and some tuna. He is slow and careful and patient with his every gesture; when he gives me my change, he presses the bills flat and ensures the symmetry of the corners; when he gets me a bag to pack my goods, he checks its condition thoroughly.  One day I entered his shop carrying a stack of empty boxes I intended to use at home; as I was paying for my purchase, he was busying himself with cutting twine and tying my boxes into a stack, lest I have a difficult time carrying them home after visiting his shop.

While he doesn't ever unload reams of unwanted advice on me to alleviate his sense of inadequacy, he is nonetheless a resevoir of knowledge about everything from culture and custom to techniques of Indian cuisine. One day I asked him about a dish I've been trying to become better at making—rajmah, which is spicy kidney beans in curry—and he was quite helpful in informing me about the proper blend of spices. Another day we were looking for vanilla extract; he didn't have any, but was quick to point out that we needed to ask for 'vanilla essence', not extract, and to be wary of our purchase. Such an item was likely to be a rare purchase for the natives, and would be kept behind the counter in a box; be careful of how much dust the shop keep has to blow off the box, he warned, because their product might be extremely old. When at last I did find a shop that carried vanilla essence, they were sold out—a fact I only discovered when the shopkeep turned around, ruffled about under the counter for a while, and turned to face me wielding a box so ancient and dust-ridden that I couldn't even read the labels on the side. It's the sort of advice Wikipedia will never provide because you've got to have been paying attention to the smallest of details for many, many years to know it.

His employees are treated with the utmost respect, and they too are always happy to see me. On more than one occasion I've entered his shop just as he's sent one of the boys to go and get the staff some chai (Indian tea), whereupon he always insists that I have one and quickly sends the boy back for more. They operate together with a clock-like efficiency, and I often catch him asking questions to his younger staff; he trusts them with their work, enough to let them be the experts about it, and to let their opinion and knowledge matter. Small though their job might be, each of them is apprenticing, if not to become future shopkeeps than at least to become future men of diginity and wisdom.

At Christmas, Ninotchka thought to bake him and everyone who works there some macaroons. I think that this was quite possibly regarded by Sanjay as the kindest thing anyone has ever done to him, and when we stopped in a couple of days later we were shocked to discover that he had gotten us a small Christmas gift, a set of four glasses.

In junior high and elementary school my mother bought me a calculator every year that I invariably lost in the first six weeks. For a few years she replaced it once, after which it became evident that my company was effectively a blackhole into which calculators entered and never returned; thereupon, she would cease to feed the vortex and I would spend most the school year doing my math by hand. So, of necessity I became very good at doing arithmetic in my head, and Sanjay was very surprised on my first few visits to discover that I had already figured out what I owed him before he'd finished with his calculator. Today, I don't calculate my purchase when I shop with him, and he knows it—he knows that I no longer feel any need to check what I owe, because the number he provides will be, invariably, accurate. I don't simply mean that he's too careful to make mistakes; he's all too honest to short change me. After having shopped their only three times (back when I'd first arrived) I'd gone and placed around 400rs worth of goods on the counter (about $9 at home); however, I'd also only brought about 125rs with me. Without a moment's pause Sanjay insisted that I could simply pay him the difference on my next visit. I paid for less than half of what I'd taken after having met in only three times!

In any case, he discovered that I could add quickly because I would tell him to keep the two or three rupees he would have to give me back as coin before he'd finished calculating. Consequently, we now have a competition to see who can trick the other one in to getting the better deal. If my purchase is 97 rupees, I try to pay 100 and he tries to charge 95. So far, I confess, he is winning; and it's not merely because he's the one making the change and is thus in a far better position to simply ignore me if I instruct him to keep the change. No, indeed; I am so insistent sometimes that I make his employees awkward because they can't imagine keeping a customer's change, but they're equally uncomfortable disregarding a direct request from a customer. No, on this matter Sanjay is simply much cleverer than I. Only a few days ago, when attempting to pay more than I ought, he quietly acquiesced (or pretended to!), filled one of my hands with a grocery bag, and then—at the last possible second—slipped the coins into my other hand as he placed the handles of the second grocery bag around it. I would have had to put everything down just to be able to give it back, nevermind having to argue with him about it besides. I turned on him with a frown and a parody of disapproval, but was simply met with his grin which simultaneously communicated his humble committment to some esoteric inner code of shopkeeping ethics and a boyish pride at having beat me  at our game. And these, dear readers, are the sorts of idiosyncrasies, the daily exchanges of tiny gratitude and kindness that begin to really change you if you practice them long enough, and with enough attention to appreciate them. 

So maybe this story, which is really just a collection of little stories, is not terribly interesting or adventurous; but these are the details that characterize India, they are the sorts of subtle happenings that you can't fit into a succinct rebuttal when someone asks you why in the hell you have voluntarily chosen to endure intermittent electricity and all manner of biological indescretion, but which in the end make the difference. To conclude, people like Sanjay and the relationships that ensue are the sorts of things you can only have if you come and live here instead of merely visiting, so perhaps the real value in sharing this story is that it provides a window into life in India as opposed to travel through it. 'Till next time...