2008 is turning into quite a year for travel for me. In Feb., I made it to India for two weeks, and today, I am in the second half of a trip to Italy, Tuscany to be precise. I am writing this entry from an internet cafe in Siena, the day before they run the Palio. (here's a link if you need to know more about the Palio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palio_di_Siena). I will write more about Italy when I get home (after the 4th of July).
But I've been thinking a lot about my India trip these last few days. We stayed for most of the trip in a fantastic castle in between Delhi and Jaipur. The castle was several hundred years old, and was truly a luxury destination ( http://www.nivalink.com/fortneemrana/ ).
Right outside the hotel were two silver shops, right next to each other. These two shops were completely dependent on the economy of the tourists who stayed in the hotel. Both owners were bitter rivals, and they were eager to please or arrange anything for us. When I asked one of them where I could find an ATM, he said, 'Jump on my motorcycle. I will take you.' He wheeled out his bike, closed up his shop and off we went. He also knew that because I owed him, I would come into his store, buy some of his 'silver,' and encourage my friends to stop there too.
His name was Baloo, or Balu? or maybe Ballu. He was easy going, and the people on my trip leaned on him the most. He arranged cars and drivers for us when we wanted to go to nearby cities, his cousin provided henna tattoos for the women at a henna tattoo party he arranged, and our first night there, he led 6 of us on a walk around town. He pointed out a few sights and asked a lot of questions of us, so he could better know what we were up to for the rest of the week and where the profit margin was.
As we walked with him, I pulled aside one of our group leaders, a woman who had been raised in India and spoke Hindi. I asked her, 'how do I say thank you and please in Hindi?' She raised her eyebrow and told me (I've since forgotten what the words were), but then she looked at me and said 'Don't you want to know how to say 'NO'?' Good question. Learn how to say NO in a new culture, not just please and thank you. It felt like a life lesson.
On the walk, the other silversmith shopowner followed us, frustrated that we were talking to Baloo, frustrated that he did not have as much English as his rival, frustrated that he was not lining up our business. We weren't sure of his name, but that night we began to call him Sher Khan, in honor of The Jungle Book. We thought we were very clever.
Over the course of the two weeks, the group I traveled with used both men's shops. Each store had the Internet (very slow dial ups, but the only games in town), so we all trudged down from the hotel, used their internets, bought some jewlery, garnered their help for various travel tasks, and generally played one off the other. Over dinner, we spent many nights comparing the merits and faults of Baloo and Sher Khan- different ones of us preferred one or the other, but we all tried to 'balance' our custom to some degree.
At the end of the 2nd week, our instructor (the woman who asked me if I wanted to know how to say NO) stopped me in one of my rambles about the Baloo v. Sher Khan debate. She pointed out what a colonialist arrangment it was. We had given the locals nicknames, we had never bothered to learn their real names, we had played one off the other for financial and entertainment purposes, we had discussed them over our luxury dinners and cocktail hours, and then we were going to leave these two rivals, in a rivalry we had intensified, as we pulled out of the country. That was it. Colonialism is not that hard to participate in.
Italy is nice, and I am giving out no new nick names. And I know how to say no in Italian.
I hope to write more over the summer. I hope all the readers are well (you know who you are)
J
