Adventures at Bandra Fair

The only way to navigate a city as large and dense as Mumbai is to begin breaking it down into manageable chunks. The first of these divisions is at the level of what you might call a district, not unlike political ridings in cities back home (though the comparison is strictly a geographical one; I do not currently have even the slightest inlking of how politics are performed here). These then subdivide into neighbourhoods, and finally into societies, which are the apartment compounds I've mentioned before. While something similar certainly exists in most cities, by way of necessity Mumbai relies on this segmentary organization for everything from the postal service, to navigation, to the sustainance of religious, economic and cultural communities. Until yesterday, then, I had never left the district in which I am staying, which is named Malad. Bandra, another distrinct significantly to the south of Malad, is both Ninotchka's old haunt (she has lived in Mumbai on several other occasions, spanning durations as little as two months and as long as four years) and the site of the aptly named Bandra Fair. Having spent so much time in bed or at least trapped within twenty-seconds walking distance of a washroom, we were both very excited to get out of the house for a while. Thus, we took a train to Bandra Fair.

Taking a train in Mumbai is not quite like catching, say, a subway, or a bus. Like many things in India, the trains in Mumbai are much more likely to end your life than their Western counterparts, and like most things that can kill you in Mumbai, this is primarily attributable to population density. Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram quite accurately describes the trains of Mumbai as dichotic places of fierce and aggressive competition immediately succeeded by charming, polite socializing. As always, here, it's a question of space; if you would like to have any, you had better damn well ensure you get it, and elbows first is the strategy of choice in this particular affair. There are no doors on Mumbai's trains, only doorways, and so once the cars are full, the only way to catch the train is to hang from it's doorways or grapple onto some other part of its outside frame. Luckily, this was not part of our experience, but I did spend thirty minutes in each direction awash in the aromas of hundreds of armits, and damp with perspirations not my own. It's not the sort of place you want to take a date, but it gets you from place to place for about 25¢. In this case, the place it got us to was Bandra.

Bandra is a shopping district, indeed the shopping district, and the annual fair is an opportunity for the area's sidewalks to spontaneously inflate with bursting, colorful reams of what is, for the most part, a plethora of low-quality items of mass appeal. The name of the game is negotiation; the prices aren't posted, and they certainly aren't fixed. This doesn't for a minute, however, mean they aren't rigged; on the contrary, they most certainly are. The degree to which one succeeds in not paying exhoribitant prices is a measure, I gather, of how legitimate is one's right to refer to themselves as Mumbaiker (the official tital of a Mumbai native). Let me spare you the suspense: no one, anywhere, at any time even remotely mistook either myself nor my wallet for having originated in Mumbai. I was, to put it bluntly and succinctly (the latter condition I will shorty negate), altogether had. That said, most of the time I was more or less aware of the occurence, if usually not to the extent, of my 'donations'. But I get ahead of myself.

The process goes something like this: you must approach an item you are looking for cautiously, with a calm, cool disinterest. If you are seen to want something, you're done before you've even begun. Assuming you can succesfully browse without letting on that anything has caught your eye, you may then casually ask the price. Depending on how much of a mug you are assessed to be, the ensuing number that will you be quoted will fall somewhere on a spectrum between marginally inflated to a numerical hyperbole that is, frankly, comical. Thereupon, you touch blades, and the match begins. Most people, I gather, immediately trip and fall on their swords by either accepting the price they are offered (a mistake perpetrated only by foreigners without at least some meager tutelage in the ways of Indian shopping) or else parry with a thrust far to weak to ever penetrate the real value (the more common mistake by far, and the one to which I proved unfortunately--literally--prone). Obviously, whatever offer one makes in response to the proprieter's initial extortion is clearly the lowest number one can ever again counter with. Thus, if one is so obviously a mark as am I, the degree to which the offered price will be exaggerated is often so great that it's hard to overcome the fear of being foolish off the mark that one would require to actually offer a reasonable price. For example, the last encounter of my two-day escapade into Bandra Fair went something like this:

Jon: How much for these sunglasses?
Shopkeep: Rs. 550.
Jon: [A smirk, followed by a by-then knowing smile] No Sahib, this is too much. Rs. 200, I give.
Shopkeep: [Aghast, shock and dismay blatant on his face] No, no; these are excellent glasses. Very nice on you. 550.
Jon: Thankyou, have a good day. [A casual, dismissive wave ensues, and I turn to leave]
Shopkeep: Ok, ok! You bargain, you deal. I say 350.
Jon: [Pointing to the shoddy hinges, and the painted-on metallic finish obscuring the plastic beneath] No, I give 200.
Shopkeep: [Outrage, with a gesticulatory flourish that clearly indicates that he will have no choice but to starve should I continue on in this fashion]. I can go 300.
Jon: [Suddenly insecure, doubt forming behind my brow] Uhh. 250, no more, no more.
Shopkeep: [Exasperated and defeated] Ok, ok, 275 I can do for you, 2--7--5.
Jon: [Suspects something has gone wrong, turns to leave]
Shopkeep: Ok! I take. 250, 250 I take it.
Jon: [Victorious, pays]

Whereupon I thanked the man, feeling good about having paid less than half of the original asking price, donned my new shades that had cost me about $8 CAD, and hopped into a waiting vehicle which contained my host Cheryl, her driver Babloo, and Ninotchka.

Jon: Cheryl, what do you think I should have paid for these?
Cheryl: These? These are nice, I think maybe Rs. 80.
Jon: [Facepalm]

I had suspected I ought to have shot lower, you understand, but the risk of looking absolutely foolish prevented me from doing so. Did I really believe this man was trying to charge me 700% more than the item was worth? In retrospect, the answer is quite simple: I'm white, so, yes.

The game is fun, however, and while I've played it rather poorly so far, it is one in which learning from one's mistakes pays dividends (or rather, fails to lose them). Of course, all road-side shopping is like this, here (and most shopping, incidentally, is road-side), but Bandra Fair has a thrilling blend of megalomania and mercantilism that makes it something else. At least, this is how it was experienced from the vantage of one who has always seen a price tag as a placeholder for the stone tablets they were originally printed on.

But, the shopping misadventures weren't the only highlights of our tour of the Bandra beat. Along with meeting more of Ninotchka's extended family, all of whom continue to prove charming, friendly and endlessly hospitable people, we also succeeded (at last) in acquiring our wedding rings. That is, we got ink! Al's Tatoo Parlor is, I gather, a somewhat famous location in Mumbai, or at least in Bandra, and the amply pierced, tatood and smiling men inside were happy to place upon our fingers the three concentric circles we had long been hoping to get. This was a task Ninotchka and I had failed to convince any Haligonian artists to do, because the hanf and fingers are areas of the body that exfoliate very quickly, and thus tolerate very little disturbance if one's tatoo is to remain crisp, smooth and attractive. Being unwilling to risk the damage to their reputation that might ensure from irresponsible customers, we were unable to get them done by anyone at home in time for our wedding. Yet, I confess now that I am happy of the fact that at least a small part of our matrimonial activities could be completed here in India.

I do have some photographs of these sights (especially the waterfront, which is enormous and beautiful, though in Bandra uncontaminated by sand), as well as of our new rings, but I've sadly forgotten to bring them to the internet source I'm currently devouring. I'll be sure you avail you all of them as soon I am able.