S. held back as long as she could. She had been patient with seeing old palaces with guides that told us far more than we wanted to know. She had even been a good trooper on the long and harrowing car trips. But now, by god, she wanted some good ol’ fashioned shop til you drop time. She even did research…..asked other ladies in the bar of the hotel, looked at he published adverts that the hotel handed out, she even asked advice from the guide. She warned me that she wasn’t going to put up with any dithering or complaining from me, and I agreed that the day was going to be hers. I was just along for the ride.
She had targeted and placed a local textile and dress designer, Inokhi, highest on our list. And that’s were we headed. I was docile because I didn’t have much choice, and I figured I’d get the worst of it out of the way first. The place looked a little seedy, but so did all of Jaipur, and it had a slight case of concrete rot, but they had installed a small outdoor coffee and pastry shop on a covered patio adjoining the shop. The interior of the shop was much nicer than the facade and much larger, and even a quick glance suggested that they had some high quality goods. I knew I was in for a rough morning. I immediately targeted on the W.C. in the rear of the shop for reasons I’ve previously recounted, but just before I was able to enter the facility I ran into a beehive of New Zealand ladies scurrying about in the common area between the W.C. and the changing rooms. The queen bee said, “oh no, you can’t go in there, there are a bunch of naked ladies”. I said, “it won’t bother me if it won’t bother them, and in any case if I don’t get in pretty quick, there’ll be another kind of problem”. She got the message and quickly herded the ANZAC ladies out of my immediate range of view. I did my business and got out quick. I do know my place.
I took a quick turn around the shop and noticed that S. was starting to hyperventilate over the “bed coverings”, so I decided to explore the coffee patio. I had two cups of great french press coffee, a sticky bun and read the Indian Times cover to cover….and that’s heavy going. I peeked in the shop once and noticed that the pace of activity had picked up, and the crowd had been increased by a large Indian lady, probably a Non- Resident Indian (NRI), ordering the staff around, two ladies obviously from west coast, probably LA, and a very strange hippe, gringo type male who was picking out skimpy tie dyed blouses for his very young playmate. S. already had a pile of goods around her, and I knew this was no place or time for me to hang around.
Deep into my second french press I glanced into the window of the shop which I could see from where I was seated and saw S. directing a young Indian clerk to employ a grabber of some sort to get more goods off the top shelf. There was a stir of activity all about approaching the frenetic. I gave it another twenty minutes and got up my courage to go into the shop and demand that S. bring this episode to an end. When I opened the door I was horrified to find a huge gaggle of women, all of the New Zealanders, the Indian NRI and the Californian pair all trying to check out at the same time. There were huge piles of brightly colored good laying about. I’ll give S. credit, she was in the thick of it. She was shoulder to shoulder with the NRI and slightly ahead of the west coasters. The ANZACS never had a chance. There was chatting and general conviviality in the air. Much as you would expect to see after a pack of mads dogs had been left alone in a meat house for a couple of hours.
And this was only the first shop.
