After...the Haggling

Yesterday, we were extravagantly colonial, and hired a driver for 8 days, starting from Jaipur with the plan to work our way through the central and southern part of Rajasthan, until we arrive at Udaipur. The sunk cost of hiring the car immediately expanded our horizons, and we made a few stop offs - first Sanganer just outside Jaipur, where there are large numbers of handmade paper and textile factories. Mulchand, our driver, took us to a textile printing area and a thin dark man immediately began to guide us round, speaking in the most appalling English in which every third word was 'after': 'after the cleaning after, then not working, the bleach after, go after, block print, expensive, print, dyeing after, drying sunshine' - it seems quite straightforward written down but this is my very generous rendition/translation of what he actually did say, which was infinitely more incomprehensible. Anyway, there were huge lengths of cotton hanging down from scaffolds: unbleached, white, and coloured, waving in the light breeze. There were finished sheets and saris drying on the sand, or heaped in piles where small boys were cutting off rougher edges; there was the screenprinting factory, with dark dyes in puddles on the floor, and two men placing the screen at set intervals, then drawing the paint across the screenframe. We were taken to a block printing place, and finally, inevitably, to a showroom. Katya soon picked out a nice blue and white bedspread, but the big boss proved surprisingly resistant to haggling. 'No sir, we sell to Liberty's, do you know this, of Regent Street' - I suspect this was a classic spiel, handed down from generation to generation and across hundreds of showrooms, but in any case we knew we wanted it even at the price, he seemed to know, and having a car probably raised the price. We got as far as the car, still trying to beat him down, but in the end relented, and took it happily...he trying to stifle a smile too.