A young man welcomed us into his emporium of fine textiles with a mighty grin. He led us through a huge warehouse full of rolled up carpets and rugs, to a large room with chairs around the edge. “Please sit down,” the man said. “I will get you some chai.” He walked off and Dinesh followed him.
I looked around the room. As well as some carpets and bits of rug hanging on the walls, there were a few old-looking machines that seemed to be part of a display. Perhaps the carpet emporium doubled up as a museum. I rolled my eyes and groaned.
“Shush,” scolded Angela. “We won’t be here long. Just let me look at a few carpets and then we can go.”
Our teas arrived on a gleaming silver tray. I took a sip of the milky, sugary chai and deemed it palatable. Angela took a sip of hers but then put it back on the tray. In front of us waited two men: one was the smiling young man who had brought us in; the other was a man in his thirties, who introduced himself as Deepak. Both men had moustaches. Dinesh was no doubt in another room somewhere, being slapped on the back for managing to get the gullible tourists into the emporium.
“How is the chai?” the older man asked. He was grinning insanely.
I took another sip. “Very good.”
The man wobbled his head. “Well if you please, we can now look at some carpet weaving equipment. Leave your drinks on the tray. They will be refilled by the time we return.” Deepak uttered something to his colleague who nodded and disappeared.
I glared at Angela: This is your fault. She pretended not to notice. We followed the man to the old machines. It turned out to be a weaving device. Above it hung an intricately patterned rug. “This rug comes from the Kashmiri part of India,” explained Deepak. “A whole family has toiled over it for many weeks, maybe even months. Then they will make another. It is their life. Every carpet they weave is unique.”
He demonstrated how such a rug was made. It seemed a painstaking process, involving knots and threads, all using the machine in front of us. No wonder it took months to finish one. After showing us the main whereabouts of Indian carpet manufacturing regions, Deepak led us back to the seats. As promised, our cups had been refilled. We sat down and awaited the hard sell.
A new set of men arrived: a trio of beaming carpet salesmen, and Deepak disappeared. Combinations of rugs were laid out before us, with the salesmen watching for any reaction. I couldn’t have cared less about the carpets and tried to stifle a yawn by drinking some chai. It tasted like it had six spoonfuls of sugar in it. I swirled it around and the salesmen diverted their attention to Angela who was leaning forward to study the offerings.
Each new rug received a nod or a shake from my wife. The latter meant another quickly replaced it; the former meant it was left for more consideration – the men were narrowing things down quite nicely. After fifteen minutes, I could tell Angela liked the look of a blue carpet. She neither nodded nor dismissed it. It sat there, awaiting contemplation.
“That rug is very special,” said one of them, a moustached man with a receding hairline. “Only one of a kind. Please feel free to touch the merchandise. Feel how precise the weaving is. And see here, the underside is just as bright. Both sides of this rug can be displayed proudly.”
Angela felt the carpet and so did I. It felt like a carpet, but I nodded appreciatively. I also tried to notice any price tags. There weren’t any. Meanwhile, other similar-looking blue carpets appeared. Dinesh appeared too. He loitered by the doorway with a cup of chai. Angela looked at the new offerings, but returned to the original one.
Angela turned to me and whispered, “This would look great in the dining room…”
The salesmen gave each other knowing glances. The balding man said, “It is a very fair price. And because today is slow day, we will accept your best offer.”
I nodded, wondering whether we could get out of the carpet emporium without buying anything. It seemed doubtful now, especially since Angela was stroking the blue rug as if it was a cat. And how much was a fair price to offer? I had no idea how much carpets were worth. I sat back, taking another sip of my sweet tea.
The carpet men were waiting patiently. They knew crunch time was almost upon them. The only thing holding up proceedings was the cost of the damned thing. They didn’t want to say how much it was, and I didn’t want to take a guess. In the end, Angela broke the deadlock. She asked them directly how much it cost.
The man in charge studied the carpet, looking demure for a moment, as if he couldn’t possible give us a price for such a fine item. Finally though then looked up. “Seven thousand rupees.”
I almost knocked the tray of chai over. Seven thousand rupees was about seven hundred pounds. Seven hundred pounds for a bit of blue cloth! I couldn’t help myself, I actually laughed. Angela asked me how much seven thousand rupees was worth, and when I told her, she backed away from the rug. She wasn’t laughing.
“Okay, offer fair price,” said the man with the receding hairline, his smile disappearing slightly. “Remember though, this is a unique piece and would have taken a family many months to weave. It is one of our finest rugs.”
“Can you leave us alone for a few minutes?” I asked. “I’d like to talk to my wife in private.”
“Of course, sir.” When they shuffled away, taking Dinesh with them, I asked Angela how much the carpet was worth.
“I don’t know. But it is a good one. If we bought it in England, it would be hundreds of pounds. But seven hundred is too much. The maximum we should pay is four hundred.”
“Four hundred?” I spat. “For a bloody rug? We could carpet the whole house for that, and still have money to spare for a few pictures.”
“Don’t exaggerate. Besides, it will be a family heirloom. Haggle him down to four hundred.”
I threw my wife a look. “You haggle him down.”
“You know I hate things like that. You do it. You’re better than me.”
In the end, after much haggling back and forth, we bought the fine blue specimen for £380. The salesmen took our money and gave us an official receipt in return. One of the men wrapped our carpet up into a parcel and promised it would arrive at our UK address within the month. And they were true to their word.
“You got a good deal,” said Dinesh as we headed back outside. “You drove a hard bargain. I have not seen one sell for so little in a long while.”
Extracted from Jason Smart’s latest e-book, Crowds, Chaos, Colour.
