City Market

I went to the City Market of Baroda the other day to do some shopping. The place was nothing as I envisioned. About a kilometer long square in the middle of the city, the market probably had hundreds of stores selling all kinds of clothes, jewelry, food, and the like. Small streets within the kilometer square served as dividers, separating one row of stores from the next, and providing pedestrians with a walkway from one store to the next. The streets were filthy and crowded with what seemed like thousands of people. As is the norm in India, people were shoving their way along the crowd trying to find what they had come here for.  I do not know why, but motorcyclists and bikers were also trying to make their ways past all the foot traffic (it would have been significantly quicker and simpler to just drive around the market). Shop owners and their employees, meanwhile, were on the streets trying to do anything to attract customers. The scene was loud and chaotic.

We walked into a couple of stores and were heckled from the start. In India, the employees come to you Irregardless of whether you need help. If you tell them that you are just looking and that you do not need help, they start telling you about every which item they have, and how it all would look so great on you or make a good gift for your family or friends. If you tell them again very nicely that you don’t need their help, they shut up but follow you around the store, keeping a close eye on you or looking very annoyingly over your shoulder.

We spent about three hours at the market, and bought clothes, jewelry, and two toy Rickshaws after some serious price bartering. When making a purchase in India, especially at a place like the City Market with hundreds of small stores, there are no price tags on purchasable items. If you want to buy something you have to ask the merchant how much. Seeing that you are a foreigner (not so much me but all the white people I was with), they’ll try to royally screw you. The only way to get a fair price is to act like a jerk, and try and screw them. When we were purchasing the toy Rickshaws for example, the guy tried to sell them to us for a hundred rupees (like two dollars). We said, “I’ll buy one from you for 30 rupees” (essentially like 70% off, and about 60 cents in value), and we compromised on 50 rupees. Then, instead of buying from this guy, we went and told a nearby vendor that this guy would sell us a Rickshaw for 50 rupees, and that we’d buy from him if he’d sell it for 30 rupees. He immediately agreed. Then we asked him if he’d sell two toy Rickshaws for 40 rupees, and we eventually agreed to purchasing two toy Rickshaws for 50 rupees (1 dollar). So, essentially, we acted like jerks, but this was required to get a fair price. In fact, that they were willing to sell us an item at 25% of the price they initially asked for also showed that they were trying to rip us off, so I didn’t feel bad doing the same to them.

Bartering is the way almost everything goes in India, from rickshaw rides to purchases at all small stores. So, simply put, if you are not willing to be a jerk, India is not the place for you. Unless you are okay with getting ripped off and taken advantage of everywhere you go.