This weekend I went to the mall in hopes of finding some women's soccer shoes. All in all, it was a failed, but highly amusing trip.
Saket Market is an upscale mall fairly close to my house. Most important it is on my metro line, and since I love the Delhi metro more than anything else in this entire city (with the possible exception of the street samosas I get everyday for lunch) I decided to seek my fortunes that-a-ways.
(the lovely, clean, air-conditioned, safe, cheap, fast, Delhi metro)
Googlemaps told me that the walk from the metro stop to the mall would be about 20 minutes, so I'd predetermined that I would take a bicycle rickshaw from the metro. I really enjoy taking the sensation sailing through the city on a bike--without having to do any of the work myself--and the opportunity to employ the cyclist, who tend to be at the bottom of the Delhi-transport-for-hire heap. (As a side story, once I was riding a bicycle rickshaw when suddenly I became aware of my cyclist tiny frame and wondered why I hadn't noticed that my cyclist was a prepubescent boy when I got into the rickshaw. Then I noticed that my cyclist had grey hair and realized that actually, he was an older man with the frame of a child. And since then I've noticed that almost every cyclist I see is very, very small. I suspect this is because the cyclists tend to be quite poor, and were perhaps malnourished as children.)
Anyway, emerging from the metro stop closest to the mall I noticed that a large congregation of auto-rickshaw drivers had congregated at the top of the stairs and were yelling out to each person as s/he summited. The attention that your average Indian gets from hawkers is generally quadrupled when it comes to me, and sure enough, as soon as the auto-rickshaw drivers saw me they descended upon me like the eighth plague of Egypt. There I was, standing at the center of a circle of 10-15 rickshaw drivers, all yelling out different prices, locations, and frantically trying to usher me into their autos. Indians have perhaps a different concept of personal space than Americans do, which is to say that this circle was tight. I looked in vain for a bicycle rickshaw, but saw to my dismay there was none. I was boxed in, with no escape.
And so, I panicked.
Now, what I should have done was just gone with the flow, picked an autodriver and gotten into his auto rickshaw, demanded he put on the meter or negotiate a reasonable price upfront then Poof! Off I would have gone, arriving at the mall in high auto rickshaw style.
What I did instead was to fake a phone call to myself in Spanish.
Actually, generally speaking in loud Spanish to or around hawkers has worked wonders here, I thought that that drivers would leave me alone when they realized that I was engaged in a conversation in a language they don't speak and showing them no mind. And I'd say about half of the rickshaw drivers did, in fact, buzz off. But the other half not-so-patiently still encircled me--every now and then trying to interrupt my call to offer me "special-price rickshaw." And as soon as I ended my fake call, the circle reconstituted in full force.
Well, to make a very long story short--after trying several other absurd strategems to lose/choose an auto-rickshaw driver I finally decided just to walk. And the walk was dusty, and by the side of a major road, and hot, and loud, nd smelly, and not at all nice. But I arrived at the mall more or less in one piece and after making my way through the bag scanner and metal detector (oh yes, Delhi has scanners everywhere), finally made it into the nice air-conditioned comfort of homey capitalism. Ahhhhh!
Stay tuned to hear about my adventures in the mall later!
Saket Market is an upscale mall fairly close to my house. Most important it is on my metro line, and since I love the Delhi metro more than anything else in this entire city (with the possible exception of the street samosas I get everyday for lunch) I decided to seek my fortunes that-a-ways.
(the lovely, clean, air-conditioned, safe, cheap, fast, Delhi metro)
Googlemaps told me that the walk from the metro stop to the mall would be about 20 minutes, so I'd predetermined that I would take a bicycle rickshaw from the metro. I really enjoy taking the sensation sailing through the city on a bike--without having to do any of the work myself--and the opportunity to employ the cyclist, who tend to be at the bottom of the Delhi-transport-for-hire heap. (As a side story, once I was riding a bicycle rickshaw when suddenly I became aware of my cyclist tiny frame and wondered why I hadn't noticed that my cyclist was a prepubescent boy when I got into the rickshaw. Then I noticed that my cyclist had grey hair and realized that actually, he was an older man with the frame of a child. And since then I've noticed that almost every cyclist I see is very, very small. I suspect this is because the cyclists tend to be quite poor, and were perhaps malnourished as children.)
Anyway, emerging from the metro stop closest to the mall I noticed that a large congregation of auto-rickshaw drivers had congregated at the top of the stairs and were yelling out to each person as s/he summited. The attention that your average Indian gets from hawkers is generally quadrupled when it comes to me, and sure enough, as soon as the auto-rickshaw drivers saw me they descended upon me like the eighth plague of Egypt. There I was, standing at the center of a circle of 10-15 rickshaw drivers, all yelling out different prices, locations, and frantically trying to usher me into their autos. Indians have perhaps a different concept of personal space than Americans do, which is to say that this circle was tight. I looked in vain for a bicycle rickshaw, but saw to my dismay there was none. I was boxed in, with no escape.
And so, I panicked.
Now, what I should have done was just gone with the flow, picked an autodriver and gotten into his auto rickshaw, demanded he put on the meter or negotiate a reasonable price upfront then Poof! Off I would have gone, arriving at the mall in high auto rickshaw style.
What I did instead was to fake a phone call to myself in Spanish.
Actually, generally speaking in loud Spanish to or around hawkers has worked wonders here, I thought that that drivers would leave me alone when they realized that I was engaged in a conversation in a language they don't speak and showing them no mind. And I'd say about half of the rickshaw drivers did, in fact, buzz off. But the other half not-so-patiently still encircled me--every now and then trying to interrupt my call to offer me "special-price rickshaw." And as soon as I ended my fake call, the circle reconstituted in full force.
Well, to make a very long story short--after trying several other absurd strategems to lose/choose an auto-rickshaw driver I finally decided just to walk. And the walk was dusty, and by the side of a major road, and hot, and loud, nd smelly, and not at all nice. But I arrived at the mall more or less in one piece and after making my way through the bag scanner and metal detector (oh yes, Delhi has scanners everywhere), finally made it into the nice air-conditioned comfort of homey capitalism. Ahhhhh!
Stay tuned to hear about my adventures in the mall later!
So smart to come up with the idea of jabbering away in Spanish to get people to buzz off! And why all the scanners and metal detectors - fears of Islamist terrorism?
ReplyDeleteThe shoving crowdedness was one of the most exhausting things about India for me, and amazingly so much worse than even the most obnoxious/aggressive/cramped collection of people on the NYC subway. I remember wishing I could physically push people away from me. The best solution I ever came up with was a large bag with nothing valuable in it that I could use as a distancing device - Spanish is a much neater trick!
ReplyDeleteAnd glad you got into the calmness and cool. Whew.
Yeah, they're terrified of terrorism here actually. Even worse than in the USA. And indeed, the crowdedness is intimidating even to one used to the NYC subways. (Beijing did prepare me a bit, though. Honestly, I think there is a post coming in my future comparing China and India)
ReplyDelete