Commercial Street

Friday afternoon I went to a new part of the city that I have heard is good for shopping but hadn't made it to yet. It was definitely not a street I could have managed the first few days here. It's called Commercial Street and it is lined with all sorts of shops and very busy. Most of the stores are not chains and they sold everything from elephant statues and wall hangings, to clothes, to food, to jewelry - not at all like the bigger department stores I had been going to. I went into one shop and was told because I had a nice smile, I could get 10% off anything I wanted but I think they say that to all the white people they see. I wandered into one shop and ended up bargaining with the owner about a wall hanging. He went through his song and dance about how it is made from antique fabrics, a one of a kind, won't be around tomorrow...so I asked how much.
"I make you good price. But first come, look at it in the light." So he takes it over by the doorway and holds it up for me. He's now got three different ones in various shades of orange and red.
"Yes, they're beautiful but how much?"
"Why you so worry? Which do you like best?"
I picked the one I liked best and he goes on and on telling me how much I'm going to love it and how I'll never find anything else like it. I know it's unique that's why I just want a price. He flips it over to reveal a tag that says something like 7500 rupees but he's got a calculator out and says, "See, 7500 but for you...I give you 25% off."
I cringe and look disappointed. He looks at his friend and nods and then says to me, "ok, I make you special price." He punches some more numbers in his calculator and I tell him it's still too expensive and I promised my husband I wouldn't spend any money.
"Oh but such a special price only for you. You can't wait, I will sell this by tomorrow."
In the end I talked him down to 4700 rupees but I still walked away with only his card and a promise to be back.

And we did go back to Commercial Street on Sunday but not to the same store. We decided to take a rickshaw over to the park and then see where we could walk to. And for those of you who think I might haven't been lying about the scaffolding, I wasn't...

(There a few more pictures posted.) And not only was it a momentous walk because it was probably the farthest we've ever gone but, like real Bangaloreans, we stopped for some street corn. We shared one ear that was charcoaled (sometimes they boil it). They wanted to put some olive green paste on it but for our first venture into street food, we opted out and just had it plain. After we made our way down a much more crowded commercial street where I got spoken to much less, as I was with George, we started making our way back to where we started. But we were a little turned around and didn't know exactly how to go so we jumped in a rickshaw. We asked the driver to take us to Church Street and ended up at some Church that was set off the main road and surrounded by a fence. It appeared we were in a Muslim section of town. We say to the driver, "no, Church Street." And he looks like, "yeah, you're here." So we change our destination to MG Road (the main road that Church is off of) and he nods like he understands.

He turns the richshaw around and takes us through these small back streets that make up a Muslim market. It was like out of a movie scene. The streets were jammed with women in burkas holding on to their kids and men shouting at vendors and vendors shouting back trying to sell their wares (mostly clothes and shoes). The people all spilled into the streets where the rickshaws and scooters were trying to get through without much success. You could feel the people pushing against one another and the sides of the rickshaw. It felt like it could be the scene in a movie where the two Americans are stuck in the Muslim part of town when two men start arguing about the price of a pair of dirty sandals which quickly turns into a fight, which quickly spreads through the streets and eventually the two Americans find there is no escape and they become the target of all the aggression. That didn't happen of course, but it did take us about 10 minutes to get down two streets and we definitely felt all eyes were on us.

When we got to a crowded intersection, we had to shout to another rickshaw driver where we wanted to go because ours still didn't really know where we wanted to go. But we finally made our way back to the more touristy section of town (although Bangalore isn't really a tourist town). We had lunch at an Indian restaurant up on the 4th floor of a building and whenever we order, the waiter inevitably looks us over and says, "ok, this is very spicy though." Normally I will change my order but we just said we know it's spicy but we'd like to try it anyway. It was not too spicy, just right. I think my taste buds are toughing up.

A few things we learned:

• Getting the richshaw drivers to use the meter is not as difficult as we once thought.
• Commercial Street is not as fun on the weekends (too crowded).
• We will never blend into the crowd.
• Being white does have it's advantages like we never have to ask a rickshaw driver for a ride and we can get a map of India, a toy snake or mini-chess set in 5 seconds flat.

Today (Tuesday the 2nd) is Gandhi's birthday and a National Holiday here. Happy Birthday to the Mahatma.