Wonderful time at a craft fair

I went to a craft fair today in Bangalore, and it was the best time ever. I spent four hours there (just because I had the time and why not) and looked at every booth more than once. There were 110 booths with handicrafts from different regions of India, all labeled with the region and the type of art: embroidery, specific type of drawing or painting, ceramics, terracotta, jewelry, wood carvings. It was heaven. I bought a few gifts for family but tried to buy only things that seemed unique or particularly well priced, since I've heard that the Anjuna Market in Goa also has crafts from all over India, and Heidi and I are planning to go there.


For myself, I bought a pair of chapals-- leather slip-on sandals. They are so cute! (And they're flats! What am I thinking? Who is this person in my body, buying flats?)






I heard the guy selling these shoes to Indians for 200 Rupees, and when I bought these, he bagged them up and said, "450." And I said, "What? No, they're 200. I've heard you." And he said, "No, madam. Those-- 200 Rupees. These-- 450." And I said to forget it and walked off and he called me back and took 200. Geez. You have to be on your toes... And I will admit that while I bargained for everything I bought, I'm not too sure if a local person would consider what I paid to be a fair price. But I feel fine about it. Anything that seemed too much, I just walked away. There was nothing there that I couldn't live without, so if there was not a price that the craftsman and I both found to be fair, no harm done.


That said, I did buy three drawings from a woman who does extraordinary work, and I would have been really disappointed if we could not come to a consensus. And we nearly couldn't. I wasn't sure what an appropriate price would be, so I called a friend who's from Bangalore and described the drawings. She advised me, and I was able to go to the negotiation table with a better idea of what to shoot for. I went back to the woman who drew these pictures and bargained and bargained, each of us writing a number on a scrap of newspaper and clicking our tongues and shaking our heads at the other person's number. When it looked like we were at a standstill, I walked away and went to all the other booths with drawings in this style. Sure enough, hers were the best. Intricate, tiny details; heavy handmade paper; sharp, clean lines; clean paper with no discolorations; and drawing content that I liked. When I made my way to the booth next to hers, which sold similar drawings, she called me over and offered me the price that my friend had advised over the phone. Yes! I took it in a heartbeat. Can't wait to get these puppies framed!

Two other highlights of the fair were the monkeys and the sugar cane juice. So at one point, I was at someone's booth, and we could hear rustling in the trees above us. The craftsman smiled and rolled his eyes and said, "Monkeys." And I was like, "Yeah, sure," thinking that he was kidding. Then while I'm standing there, a monkey runs up and grabs at some juice that's under the craftsman's table! He makes "shoo!" noises and waves his hands at the live, freaking monkey that just ran under his table, and the monkey runs off. Later I was in another area of the fair, and I could see fawn-colored, little monkeys swinging and jumping from branch to branch right above me. I mean, they were right there, like squirrels or something. It was SO COOL.

A distant second in the list of non-shopping-related coolnesses is the fresh sugar cane juice. Okay, I'm ready to have this again at any time. YUM. There were men there with huge sticks of sugar cane and a metal contraption with a handle to turn and crushing gear-things. So they'd poke the end of a sugar cane stick into the gear and crank the handle. You could see the flattened, mangled sugar cane come out the other side and juice flowing into a slanted metal pan that ran off into a pitcher. You could ask them to also crush fresh ginger or mint along with the cane or have them squeeze fresh lime juice into your cup along with the sugar cane juice. Man, it was good. I got lime once and lime and ginger the second time. At 36 cents a glass, sugar cane juice is definitely a treat I'll be seeking out in the future.