Despite this being the one place left in the world where the dollar isn’t tanking like Exxon Valdez and the site of manufacture of most things which need nimble, lowly-paid brown fingers, India is not exactly shopper’s paradise. Walking through a market in India is sensory overload– more stores crammed into narrow alleyways than you can imagine, disembodied hands reaching out to grab, tug and nudge you and the cacophonous cries of “Madam, Madam, here please!” “Madam, you look, see, number 1 quality!” “Sister! I showing you goodly authentic Indian!” Now as tempting as it is to see what a goodly authentic Indian might look like, you can’t actually respond to such siren songs. The minute you glance over, showing the tiniest sign of consumer weakness, you are funtoosh, done for. You’ll be dragged in, showered with overpriced, shoddily made goods marked with such familiar names as Guci and Parda. They’ll bring in a stool for you to sit on, children to pick through your hair and chai to placate you into consumer complacency. You’ll walk about two hours later without any clue of how you managed to spend all your rupees on a pile a heavily sequined and sparkled polyester scarves.
Not to fear, dear reader, there is another way. In this land of infinite hospitality, your shopping experience may be eased by the ever-helpful presence of what I call the urchin guide. Now the trick is to first distinguish the urchin guide from all other manner of urchin– pickpocket, leper, beggar, nosepicker, etc–as they will be of no use to you in this endeavor. The urchin guide often simply materializes at your side, perhaps silently guiding you through the Frogger game that is road-crossing in Delhi. Once you’ve managed to cross without being flattened by bus, truck, auto, car, motorcycle, or bull-cart, the urchin guide will strike up a conversation usually along the lines of how he is learning English and loves to practice it with foreigners because he is “muchly hoping for becoming government tourist agent for helping foreigner to see and love beautiful and glorious motherland of India.” He will then tell you that whatever shopping center you are heading towards is terrible, you will have much hassling there and will direct you, while entertaining you with stories of his real home, most beautiful place in India ______, to the nearest “government” shopping emporium where you will be fleeced within an inch of your credit-loving life. The urchin guide, you may by now have picked up, gets a commission and earns his living befriending confused looking tourists looking to hand over many rupees in exchange for hideous and overpriced souvenirs of their time in this great land.
Now, I want to be clear that I’m not trashing on the urchin guide. In the consumer ecosystem of Delhi, he is a keystone predator, playing a crucial role in keeping the flows of goods and currency moving as they should (one out of your pocket, the other in). They are also usually almost blindingly charming, displaying the extraordinary knack of so many Indians of being able, by simply calling you sister or friend, to immediately endear themselves to you. It’s hard to hate on a small brown child who happens to be stunningly beautiful (there are rarely ugly urchin guides roaming about and small Indians tend to adorable anyways) and sweetly calls you sister. I’m a tough woman but I’ve been felled by less. Sure I buy things that I end up regretting and pawning off as gifts to those less versed in the quality of Indian handicrafts but I do so with the knowledge that I too am playing the necessary role of easily caught and macerated gazelle in the jaws of the great Indian tourism industry.
