The Art of Haggling

Since arriving in India, I have done A LOT of haggling. Taxis do not have meters and many shops do not have set prices, resulting in a sometimes thrilling, sometimes frustrating game between the vendor and the patron. From storeowners to rickshaw drivers, everyone is trying to rip off clueless foreigners.

As strange as it sounds, there are a lot of perks to being Caucasian in Hyderabad… excellent service and lots of compliments and positive attention.  Until coming to India, I did not fully realize the extent to which whiteness is seen as ideally beautiful in many parts of the world. Women in India try to stay as fair as possible, and even have bleaching lotions similar to our rub-on tans.

So, there are lots of positives to being White in India, but haggling is NOT one of them. As soon as a street vendor sees my face, they start screaming at me to come look at the merchandise. “Come look!” “Looking is free!!” “Discount for you, Ma’am!!” Rickshaw drivers have literally driven next to my friends and I while we walk down the street, yelling, “Where you going ma’am? I take you!!”  If I am actually interested in what a vendor is screaming about, they really try and sell it. “All cotton, ma’am! All real cotton!!” “Hand made! I made all of these!!” “Excellent prices!”  If I ask what an item costs, I immediately get the tourist price, which is around 2-3 times what a local would pay. I then say that it is way too much, and name a lower, more reasonable price. This starts the game.

Sometimes I walk away, because they will not lower the price enough, or I am not interested in the item. Occasionally, they let me go, but other times, they chase me down the street yelling that they will take my price.  Walking away can be a great ploy in haggling, even when my real intention is to terminate the transaction. But, other times it is easier, and we reach a settlement somewhere between each of our original requests. This back and forth can still get a little painful. “My family must live off of this, ma’am, I cannot go below 200 Rps!!” “Only one item? I will give it for 150 if you buy two!”  As an amateur haggler, I often made the mistake of naming a reasonable price to start. This means that our settlement will be between my reasonable price and their outrageous one.  Don’t worry, I am learning quick!

This weekend, me and some friends went to this big shopping arena called Shilparamam (say that five times fast). Artists and vendors rent out little tent spaces that go on as far as the eye can see. You pay 25 rupees (around 50 cents) to enter the center so that beggars will not be inside the premises stealing or bothering customers. This shopping experience really put our haggling skills to the test. I did a lot of talk, but didn’t go through with many purchases. I want to do my real gift shopping after I have been here for a while. That way, I can haggle in Hindi and they will take me more seriously. And, I won’t just buy the first cool-ish thing that I see. For the two items that I did buy, I think that I probably got ripped off, but not too badly.  It was harder than I expected. I do not want to be taken advantage of, but I also do not want to rip off a starving artist, especially when I know that I have so much more than they do!

Yesterday, my friend Suzanne and I were headed to the mall for the afternoon to pick up a few things, and we were determined to pay a local price for the rickshaw ride. We figured it was a fun challenge, and there is much less guilt in ripping off a sleazy rickshaw driver. On the way there, we squished in with two Indian men headed the same direction, and paid 50 rupees total—a record deal! We were so proud of ourselves! And, we had a great afternoon at the mall… I got liquid detergent, a watch, some school supplies, etc.

On the way back, all of the rickshaw drivers outside the mall would not go lower than 100 Rupees to take us back to campus!  They could see that we had no other way to get back, that we only spoke English, and that we had enough money to be shopping at the mall. What’s worse is that there were around twelve or more rickshaws around, but all of the drivers came over to us at once when we indicated that we needed a ride. So, it was Suzanne and I haggling against twelve aggressive Indian men. We kept insisting that we had gotten to the mall for 50 rupees and that it was only two of us, but they said that the number didn’t matter because it was the same distance. We couldn’t believe it—drivers have ALWAYS charged us extra per-person in the past! We tried walking across the street to start over, but the drivers were screaming to each other in Telugu (or could have been Hindi) and conspiring against us!

Finally, one driver beckoned us over and said that he would take us for 80, the price that we had been demanding. We were grateful (and running a little late at this point), so we hopped in and hit the road. But soon, we found ourselves on some strange back roads, and realized that this driver had no idea where he was going! And we couldn’t get his attention, because he was BLASTING Hindi pop music in the back of the rickshaw and didn’t seem to understand English. When it became very clear that he was lost, he turned back to us and kind of just shrugged. At this point, we were really nervous. We told him to go to Gachibowli Stadium, a huge sports complex near campus that most people in the area know. He understood that, and set out in the correct direction.

When we got to Gachibowli, he tried to kick us out of the rickshaw! We attempted to explain that we were going to direct him the rest of the way, but we ended up just screaming “Keep going!!” and pointing forwards aggressively. We directed him another 2 or 3 miles that felt like the longest stretch of my life. He kept pulling over and trying to kick us out or raise the price… apparently, he agreed to 80 rupees without knowing how far we needed to go, and at this point he wanted 150!  Eventually, Suzanne and I were getting scared, so we had him pull over and let us out on a dirt road most of the way to our dorm on campus. You can imagine his confusion when, after all that, our final destination had no actual buildings in sight. But, we handed him a 100 rupee bill, and BOOKED IT back to our dorm!

Thankfully, he didn’t follow us! On the walk back, we discovered that we had both been silently thinking over possible worse case scenarios and potential escape routes. Good thing I have emergency numbers in our new cell phones and Suzanne was carrying a pocket knife! And, we are both water polo players and decided that we definitely could have taken him! But I don’t think he was actually dangerous, just angry that he wasn’t making bucks off the tourists.

So, in the end, I learned that it feels stupid to pay too much, and feels scary to pay too little. With lots of practice at the art of haggling, I am hoping to start getting it right!