A wise friend gave me the following piece of advice when I first told him I was moving to India ; “don’t try and change India. Let it change you, but above all don’t try and change it. You’ll only go mad’. Truer words were never spoken. Surviving and learning to love India is all about the ability to embrace rather than criticise, to learn to love the craziness rather than be sucked under by it, to maintain a sense of calm detachment and rationale when all about you seem to be losing their heads.
Take the FRRO (Foreigners Regional Registration Office). I’ve been visiting the same office for 7 years. Since I started going there on my annual pilgrimage to get my employment visa renewed (before the wondrous PIO card was granted to me), I’ve seen the same faces working there, and have built up a relationship with them to the point where they raise an eyebrow when I sit in front of them to submit my (ever more complex) paperwork. I’ve even managed to crack a smile out of one of them. But, when I stopped and thought about WHY these government officers were SO very inflexible and so very difficult to deal with, I started to become aware of the frustrations which they themselves must be facing, day in and day out. Take the simple issue of money and the principle of fairness of distribution of wealth. Now each of these FRRO officers probably earns in the region of 4000-9000 rupees per month, if they’re lucky (USD$100-200). That money has to support an extended (joint family) of kids, uncles, aunties and aged parents. And they are made to scrutinise the tax returns and employment letters of foreigners who are earning say 200 times that per month ( a monthly salary of an expat in Mumbai will probably hit the one million rupees a month, or USD20,000. Even the ‘poorest’ expats will easily clear three or four times the monthly salary of these officials. So don’t you think they deserve to be cut just a little bit of slack? What can be worse than dealing with a bunch of whining foreigners day in and day out, who are trying to extend visas with incorrect paperwork, shouting and ranting incoherently and shoving their goddamned huge fat salaries in front of your nose, when you’re struggling to make ends meet, have a respectable if lowly paid job, you’re up at 4am to prepare breakfast for your extended family of in-laws and children and demanding husband, AND you’re also tired of saying the same thing to someone who you can hardly understand as they’re talking AT you and very fast. I kind of understand where these guys are coming from, at least when I’m in a more forgiving mood. Some of them clearly see their jobs as their own private vengeance against the days of the Raj, and yes that can be stressful, exhausting and frustrating but others are simply following their orders, and in India that means everything.
Systems of bureaucracy and order in India are key to balancing the chaos which threatens to engulf everything. The roads, the legal system, the politics, the workplace, the transport. All seem to be teetering on the brink of an anarchic abyss, bound together in the absence of reason or logic, yet everything seems, somehow, to work. Everyone goes to bed, and gets up in the morning and the day repeats itself and life (for most) goes on. Most visitors cannot understand how this can happen, but fail to understand that it’s the small and seemingly irrational rules and regulations which glue together the madness, creating order from disorder. No-one really knows why many of these rules exist, and to challenge or question them will only result in a blank response. “Why?” or “what’s the logic for that?” will only confuse – for the logic is buried so deep below the rule, as to be completely unconnected.
Often the rules are there only to manage the hordes of people who are gainfully employed in seemingly meaningless tasks, but in a country with 100 million people living in the 8 major metros alone, and a further billion spread across smaller towns and villages, there are a lot of people available for employment. So when in a store it takes 5 people to deliver your goods to you, including one to take your items, one to tap in the prices, another to wrap, another to stamp the receipt and yet another to hand you your goods, all being scrutinised by a further 5 hangers on …. there’s no point asking why the receipt has to be given and stamped. It just does. That’s also another reason why the concept of the supermarket has never taken off in India, despite the attempts of the Tescos and Walmarts of the world to come in with their high end supermarket and hypermarket concepts. Though supermarkets do exist (there are apparently 1023 supermarkets in India according to the website yellowpages.com, vs almost 5000 Tesco stores in the UK alone), they are few and far between, and usually only within mall type centres which are springing up all over the suburban metros.
There are a few reasons for the abject failure of the supermarket chains to enter India – the most often cited being the cost of real estate. Contrary to popular belief, ie those who think that everything in India must be as cheap as the beers on the Goan beaches and the cost of a ‘real’ curry on the streets of Mumbai, the cost of housing and land in the major metros, especially Mumbai and Delhi, is prohibitively high. In the case of Mumbai, whose 18 million inhabitants (50% of whom occupy illegal slum areas and pavements) are crammed onto approximately 26 square miles of land, much of it reclaimed and thus vulnerable to flooding during the annual monsoons, space is at an absolute premium. Add to that the rapidly increasing wealth which is flooding into India’s uppermost social echelons, there is enormous pressure on the limited amount of residential properties, resulting in huge inflation (despite the recession) and prohibitively high rental and purchase costs for any residential or commercial property in Mumbai “proper”. Renting and purchasing commercial and residential square footage costs less in the suburban areas by far, hence the proliferation of malls and so called supermarkets in the northern suburbs of Mumbai. So supermarkets don’t line the streets of Mumbai for the reasons of cost efficiency but more fundamentally their absence is linked to the role of the Mom and Pop stores as social lubricants and even more critically, employment for many of the masses. Large supermarkets and hypermarkets are all about providing efficiencies of scale – and thus reducing costs. Fewer workers, more automation and centralised stock keeping means that the consumer is generally happier once the transition is made from old the new school, and the supermarket owner is of course able to reap the rewards of selling in bulk. This also defines an entirely new consumer behaviour – consisting of a ‘weekly shop’, refrigeration and planning meals in advance. For the Indian housewife, on the other hand, the daily trip to the market for fresh produce, and the purchase of individual items from mom and pop stores, a behaviour reminiscent of England in the 1950’s and 60’s, is unlikely to yield to the convenience orientated approach of the Western world. Though fast changing, the middle class indian housewife is defined by a myriad of complex values, customs and traditions which make her very different from her western counterpart. She is likely to be at home, raising children and living in a ‘joint family’ – a peculiarly Indian concept which revolves around in-laws, children, grandchildren and other assorted relatives living and staying together in a highly communal and supportive network, which may not lend much to the concept of privacy but which provides a valuable social security system in the absence of formal state support. The typical housewife therefore looks forward to her daily visits to the market as an opportunity not only to escape from the hordes of family members who are likely to be occupying a relatively small space but also to catch up with the gossip and tales from friends and acquaintances. This is her alternative support network, and allows her important ‘me’ time in a culture which does not often respect privacy or solitude. She gets to choose the ingredients for the meals for the household, and whilst these are largely cooked with help from a maid (even middle class Indian families keep domestic help – another vital form of employment for a large population), she makes the choice of how to feed her family. A supermarket shop would render this important role somewhat less significant, a pleasurable, personal experience reduced to a more mechanical interaction.
The final and most persuasive reason for the proliferation of tiny shops stocked full to bursting with dusty sacks of rice and daal, and which sell only vegetarian food (meat and eggs must be purchased elsewhere) is the need to provide labour for the masses. Every shopping experience in India has, for the expat, a completely old fashioned flavour, reminiscent of the days of local British grocery stores vs the out of town hypermarkets which now dominate. There’s a lot of friendly banter (especially for the expat who has a few words of hindi) and a lot of fun to be had in searching the dusty shelves for treasures imported from Dubai or Singapore - random sauces, sweets and biscuits which have not been seen on British supermarket shelves for years but which have ended up somewhat incongruously in the tiny Gujarati shop in Mumbai. The entire shopping experience is enchanting if you’re not in a hurry and infuriating if you are – it takes an age to get the bill written up, make a separate payment to an entirely different counter, receive the goods and the bill, and all the while politely negotiating the shopkeeper’s attempts to force various arbitrary imported items into the basket which he thinks will please the foreign palate. All that, under close scrutiny from the hordes of boys who are there to fetch items down from dusty top shelves and cupboards, pack your bags and even carry your shopping home. Not surprising that after a few weeks in Mumbai, the average foreigner craves the sterile anonymous comfort of the faceless western supermarket. There’s a pretty decent ‘hypermarket’ in the suburbs of Mumbai, which houses a small section of Waitrose products at heart stopping prices. I have paid the equivalent of five pounds there for a jar of pickled onions. But boy they were worth it.
The best place to shop for your household essentials if you’re in Mumbai and looking for a bargain, is Crawford Market. Located in a 140 year old building, by now rather ramshackle yet filled with charm, the market provides a wonderful source of all manner of foodstuffs, from fruit and vegetables to dried fruits and nuts to weird and wonderful imported delights and copycat products. You’ll definitely get charged a ‘white tax’ and can expect to be charged double for many items so bargaining is a pre-requisite, as is dodging the hordes of bony malnourished kittens who prowl around the dark interiors of the market searching for scraps. The best part is that the market is chock full of porters who carry your goods behind you in wide wicker baskets placed on their heads, without a hint of a wobble. So much easier than pushing a shopping trolley around Sainsbury’s. The market is a fascinating study in contradictions – ancient tiny men sit perched high behind piles of carrots, bananas or onions, whilst next door shelves are stacked with gleaming rows of rather random products – from Betty Crocker cake mixes to Ribena, Nutella and shiny tins of Quality Street, all loving polished every few minutes by the shopkeeper.
