Mumbai - Day 8

Today we made a trek to one of the most fearsome places on the earth for husbands - a jewelery store.

My mother wanted to go there.  Fortunately for me my wife doesn't like jewelery, especially that tacky stuff covered with diamonds, sapphires and emeralds.  Unlike being in hardware store, I can just sit back and not pick anything up.  The store was very unpretentious, just single door with the usual security guard in front.  Once inside, the owner greeted us and we said that we had been recommended by my sister-in-law.  From the gleam in his eyes when I said that, I reckon my brother has a problem on his hands.  "I'll take you upstairs in a minute," he said, "but maybe you'd like to look around here first?" "How about one of these lovely carved animals - maybe a good present for friends".   I said that I have no friends.  "How about one of these excellent silk scarves?"   "Nobody wears scarves in Australia", I replied.

It's bad enough having to visit a jeweler without them ambushing you with a foyer filled with buy-able stuff. 

"How about a genuine antique brass compass once owned by a maharajah?"  I felt like saying "Hey man, my wife has a GPS so she hardly ever gets us lost these days", but I politely declined.  I kept eying the stairs hoping that we could go upstairs, but he wasn't finished yet. "How about one of these pashmina shawls made from the finest cashmere and silk".  While they did feel and look really nice, I couldn't think of whether modern Australian women wear shawls any more.  I don't remember seeing them at Target or Best and Less.

Eventually we were invited upstairs to where the real sales battle was to take place.


My mother enquired about pearl earrings.  "I have just what you want here," he said, pulling out velvet-covered boxes. "But first, how about looking at these diamond rings?" He deftly laid out a handful of yellow and white gold rings encrusted with diamonds, sapphires and other precious stones.  I reckon that I saw a copy of Princess Diana's engagement ring in there somewhere. 

"Maybe you should put that one aside," said my mother, who is obviously hooked by anything glittering and expensive-looking.  The salesman was really getting excited by this reaction to the opening of a single display box.  He clicked his fingers to an assistant and ordered us tea and coffee.  He knew that we were all in for a long session.  I remembered then that we'd just got out of our car earlier and I told the driver that I'd call him when we were ready to be picked up; I hope he was able to find a parking space in one of the busiest cities on the planet otherwise he'd be driving around the block a very, very, large number of times.

"Pear earrings," my mother said.  "You were going to show us some pearl earrings".

"Ah, yes, earrings. I have them here".  He opened another box that contained no pearls, but lots of sparkling light that I now recognised as diamonds and other precious stones. "Maybe madam would like to try these on", he said, obviously ignoring the word "pearl" and handing her some white gold earrings covered with diamonds and royal blue sapphires. He draped an extremely expensive matching bracelet on her arm and said that the two look very good together.  My mother declined the bracelet, but he realised he had her with the earrings.  "I'll just put these over here with the others".

We finally got him to recognise the word "pearl", so he snapped a command to his assistant who then returned with a box crammed with pearls, from the tiny ones that I hope my wife likes to ones the size of marbles.  The box probably had many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth inside.  He pulled out a few.  It must have been music to his ears when my mother kept saying "larger.."  I got bored with this and wandered off to take pictures of the massacre.  Remember I said a battle took place upstairs?  Well we lost. Big time.  They argued about settings and such, and I took pictures and admired the stuff that my mother was leaving alone.

Finally the pain was all over.  Or so I thought.  He opened a draw and pulled out dozens of rings.
"Here are a few trinkets. Very cheap."  "Maybe you would like to buy a handful for friends, with Christmas coming up soon", he said helpfully.

"The stones are only garnets, citrines and amethysts," he said like a snake,  "they make good presents and nobody realises that you didn't pay much for them".  I reckon that he had an x-ray machine that had detected that we still had some small change left in our pockets.  He was desperate to get even our lunch money.

We reaffimed that we have no friends so we didn't want to buy any more, then made a dash for the door.  It's funny how you can spend such a large amount of money and only have one pocket stuffed full.  In JB HiFi I could have filled a small truck.

He farewelled us at the door and said that we should come back and have tea and coffee again because he has some really good pieces that we haven't seen yet.  

Other miscellaneous pictures:

• indian taxi
• typical sidestreet (our driver took us through some backstreets)
• oxen delivering kerosene with the commonplace rubbish on side of street

One thing I saw late this afternnoon was on the building site next door.  Talk about sex discrimination!   This group of women appeared on the building site and they gave them the easy job of carrying bags of cement on their heads into one of the buildings.

Bye for now.