I’ve been here in Bangalore for 3-4 days, and it’s starting to get familiar. The smells of the city and the aroma of incense alternating as I walk down the street, the stray dogs, the rickshaws and the motorbikes that I try to avoid, the churches, the mosques and the temples that keep appearing at each street corner. While the landscape, the people and the whole atmosphere is becoming familiar to me, I am still looked at as a stranger (less so now that I don’t keep looking all over the place, but mind my own business). One entertaining incident happened as I was walking down the street, and a guy insisted so much that I cross the street with him to visit a store, that I agreed. Here is what happened next:
I go into the store (allegedly having a 50% sale on jewelry), but I have no interest in buying or even looking at jewelry, so I turn to the other side of the store, where they have all kinds of souvenirs and pashminas. The salesman is from Cashmere, and is convinced that I’m from Iran, and keeps throwing those persian words to get on my good side. At some point, I had to tell him I am not persian, and told him I would buy something today if he guesed where I was from. Clearly enough, he did not guess, since I managed to leave the store without spending even 1 Rupee! But that guy was definitely the most insisting person I’ve met in a long time. He kept explaining the meaning of every little statue in his store, and wanted to convince me that a plain 30-cm wooden elephant is very well priced at 16,000 Rupees. For those not familiar with the local economy, you can have lunch for about 100 Rupees, and rent a room in the best hotel in town for 7,000. At this rate, one would think you’ll get a live elephant for 16,000.
Speaking of live elephants, I am hoping to encounter a few of those this weekend, once I leave the city to discover the surrounding areas.
