Sari Shopping

When I was five my parents started me on the violin. They chose the Suzuki Method of learning which places emphasis on public performance early and often. Coinciding with golden era of the Suzuki Method in the early 80’s, American canning companies were switching from the three-part can to the two part can. My grandfather was an executive with American Can Company charged with the responsibility of transitioning the three-part can technology to can plants overseas. Korea was one of his main areas of business and he brought home spectacular Korean dresses for all of his granddaughters. With their stiff, colorful silk, and embroidered flowers, my hanbok-style Korean dresses were some of my favorite possessions, and of course, I insisted on wearing them to my group violin recitals. I have seen pictures of myself, my blond hair contrasting my billowing, vibrant, Korean dress on stage amidst a herd of Asian kids in western clothes.

In my maturity my love of clothes remains intact, but self consciousness has developed into a strong sense that one must have a certain claim to wear regional dress. For example, despite a long period coveting cowboy boots, I never bought a pair until my mother moved to Texas and I had spent some time in and around Houston. Over the course of my two trips to India I admired the women’s saris, passionately studying the varieties of patterns, fabrics, and draping styles. Some of the younger, middle-class women wore acid washed jeans and cheap knock-off T-shirts while the women begging at my rickshaw were dressed in colorful saris elegantly draped on their thin frames with scores of bangles on each forearm, leading me to conclude that India has the best dressed impoverished population in the world. Wealthy women also wore saris, beautiful cotton and silk saris shot with gold and elaborately embroidered.

During my time in India I only saw one Western woman in a sari, an older woman with her grown children. I spotted her at a Delhi train station; she had that straight off the ashram lotus pond feel to her as she moved through the combination casino/homeless shelter of the Old Delhi train station with self conscious intention and serenity. Her hair was disheveled but her bindi was carefully in place. The sari looked wrong on her. It looked like she had taken a sheet from a 1950’s roadside motel and wrapped it around her body.

Here in Kandy some women utilize the classic nivi drape while others drape their six yards in the local Kandyan style. The Kandyan style is sort of backwards, upside-down and inside out compared to the nivi that features a ruffled edge circumnavigating the waist. After two months in Sri Lanka enviously watching local women of all social strata moving through the streets in their saris I decided that I was going to purchase and wear a sari, even if only in my house. My only obstacle now was the actual shopping experience.

I knew that when I entered a shop or market the sales staff would immediately shift gears from trying to form lasting positive relationships with the customer to trying to screw me as much as possible. Dr. Josh Weiss of the Negotiation Tip Podcast labels these types of negotiations as on-going interest based negotiations versus the isolated win-lose positional negotiation. The positional negotiation is an adversarial clash in which participants attempt to maximize self interest while in an interest-based negotiation the participants are concerned with each other’s satisfaction. The first time my Plastic Housewares Man wrote out a carbon copy receipt for me, leaving a record of the transaction, I knew that I had graduated from a positional to an interest based negotiation. Now I would never buy my sponges and hangers from anyone else. Unfortunately saris are not as simple as plastic buckets and I knew that the positional approach would be much stronger. My rug dealer in Aleppo, Syria explained to me that local sellers think foreigners have the money; they just have to dig it out of you. Like mining for sapphires, they just keep hammering away until they strike the vein and the gems spill out.

Lacking a local to take me around to inspire interest-based interactions, I opted for the next best thing. I asked one of the women at Dan’s think tank whose saris I had always admired for some shop recommendations. She had a plain face hidden behind large plastic-framed glasses but it was her clothes that made her stand out to me. Her saris did not strike me as more expensive but rather very well selected. I was hoping for an indication of merchandise quality as well as a place that might treat me somewhat decently. She immediately recommended a store called Juneid’s. As soon as she said the name I recalling having seen women toting their Juneid’s shopping bags around Kandy. Even better, the store was located very close to the axis of my existence in Kandy, the Food City. To quote The Bell Jar, “It seemed a lucky thing.”

On my next trip to town I took one of my US greenback fifties to the bank to exchange into Rupees. I wanted to use my own savings, not the money Dan gave me for food and transportation. I easily found Juneid’s, exactly where I had pictured it to be. They had a man stationed outside the store, like a Third World Wal-Mart greeter, to herd people inside. Normally the presence of such an employee would have sent me on my way on down the pavement, but I was secure in my recommendation. The men’s clothes were on the bottom floor and I was quickly ushered upstairs. The store was packed with locals, which I took to be a good sign. The saris were stacked on shelves behind a counter. I could look at the saris and point to the saris, but a man who had attached himself to me had to open the saris for me with a flourish, souk rug-dealer style. There were heaps of saris on the counter-tops and squads of re-folding men moved between them. The man behind the counter seemed decent enough. His English was good and I explained that I was not a tourist but a resident of Kandy. He showed me that all of the prices were marked, but I knew the locals didn’t actually pay those prices. He patiently showed me saris in a variety of qualities from rayon to cotton to silk. A pile quickly developed on the table and I was excited to realize that a beautiful silk blend block print sari was well within my price range. When shopping for a rug it is customary to narrow things down so that the shop boys can start putting things away and the sales floor staff can learn your taste. So I began indicating which saris were possibilities and which were not. Another thin man floated at my elbow, interjecting other saris from other locations for my view. This man seemed to have no concept for my taste, showing me loud large pattern after large loud pattern. He would never have made it in a rug shop.

I had it narrowed down to two saris when the man behind the counter nodded to two of the folding boys. I hadn’t planned to get two, but I could easily afford both as well as the necessary undershirts and petticoats without breaking my budget. The first pattern was a classic and detailed floral motif, predominantly eggplant and tan on a cream background. The second was an all-over coffee color with a delicate black scalloped pattern all over and a floral motif on the borders. As I watched my saris being folded the man behind the counter told me “go upstairs and look at salwars. Today just look, you can buy some other time,” as he gestured up the stairs. A salwar is the matching long tunic, pants, and long scarf ensemble seen frequently in India and Pakistan on the Muslim ladies. Even though I knew this was a ploy I was curious about the salwar stock. I could always come back after all if I did see something I liked. I lived here now.

Once I got upstairs I was greeted by the thin man who had shown me all of the ugly saris. The salwars he showed me were gaudy, with beading all over the front. There were no prices marked. When I showed slight interest in a navy blue salwar he said “oh very nice, new style.” I held it up to my body, “do you think it will fit?” I asked, hoping to be shown to a fitting room. “yes, yes, it will fit,” he reassured me. I asked how much and he told me 3,000 Rupees, about 30 USD, as much as my two silk saris and their associated underclothes combined. I put it down and it disappeared. He showed me a few more and I came across a pink one that I also liked but that also turned out to be expensive. I was disappointed in the inventory.

I was starting to get hungry, so I headed downstairs to the ground floor to pay. When I got down there the blue salwar and the pink salwar were folded next to my saris. “I don’t want these today, only the saris” I told them, taking my saris off the pile and pushing the salwars down the counter. “Look look,” the thin man from the salwar department exclaimed and began furiously writing with a red pen on a brown paper bag. “I will give you the salwars for this…and the saris for this…” he mumbled writing down the prices for everything. He wrote the figure 9,995 in large numbers and circled it at the bottom. “Credit card ok,” the sari selling man re-assured me and moved off to his department, assuming that his sale was closed. “No,” I repeated, I only want the saris. Salwars some other day,” I repeated, knowing I would never buy those salwars. The salwars were too expensive and not pretty enough for a novelty cultural item. “Ok, now look,” the thin man said leaning toward me as he put the salwars back on the pile, “Look Madame, the boss is out today, so I can do this,” he told me in a hushed tone, returning to the brown paper bag, scribbling down figures. I could feel that we were reaching an impasse; I could hear Dr. Weiss in my head talking about pre-decided goals. I was unwilling to spend more than 50 USD, which was my limit. The sales staff had decided to get a certain amount of money out of me, or to at least sell me items from two departments, and seemed confident that I had enough attachment to their sari product to acquiesce.

I knew they would never bully a local woman in such a way. As the thin man produced another similar figure I decided that I would ask one more time to just buy the saris and if he did not allow me, then I would go. I have walked out of rug shops and jewelry shops in the Middle East and India as part of a negotiation technique, but this would be different. “No,” I said sternly, pulling the saris off the bottom the pile and arranging them in front of me, “only the saris today,” I insisted. “But Madame, the salwars are very fine quality,” he started to push them back in front of me. I looked at him for a moment, stunned, before I turned around and started to walk. “Madame!” I heard his panicked voice squawk just once behind me as I started into the street. Thankfully I was not followed.