Market for bargaining!
There was a time when marketing was a matter of barter, argument, testing of produce and enjoying a general air of combativeness, which was always present in marketplaces. Things couldn’t be more different for us today. Supermarkets stock marvellous fresh produce and there’s no one around to tell a buyer which avocado is better than the other. You are free to choose.
I was hailed earlier this year by my pal Mo at our regular supermarket.
“Aiyo, no cauliflower, no!” she wails.
“So buy broccoli.”
“Hate it.”
“Learn to like it,” I say, unsympathetically. Mo is in a reminiscent mood.
“Remember Wimalaratne?”
W cast our minds back to the early days of marriage…
Wimalaratne in Stall 14 at the Colpetty Market was the most important man in our lives – next to our Dearly Beloveds whom we had to feed three times a day. His expertise in fruits and vegetables was essential to acceptable menus at home.
“So where is my cauliflower, Wimalaratne?” Mo would demand. He would produce a somewhat bedraggled specimen from the back of his stall.
“Saved it for Madam,” he’d say, doubling the usual price. And the system worked for him and for us since there was no cauliflower anywhere else in the market. He had indeed saved one for Mo. But today, there is no little stall holder personally catering to our needs at the supermarket.
Of course, Wimalaratne was a wily charmer. His mangosteens were always a few cents more than those in the neighbouring stalls. However, as he pointed out with monotonous regularity, his were larger and better.
But Wimalaratne met his match in my Indian father. Father enjoyed a feeling of personal triumph over Wimalaratne at the end of his weekly foray to the Colpetty Market.
Father met other Colombo ladies (usually Mother’s bridge playing friends) outside the stalls and gave them a lecture on the art of bargaining. Being American, Mother left marketing to her Sinhalese cook or Father, whenever he was in the country. Wimalaratne and Father were evenly matched adversaries.
“So Wimalaratne, you old rascal; how have you been?”
Wimalaratne girds up his loins for the oncoming fray. He knows enough English and Father knows sufficient Sinhala to make their battle interesting for listeners, and Mother’s bridge friends who regale her afterwards with tales of Father’s skill at the market. Mother is highly embarrassed.
“Need you call Wimalaratne a crook to his face?” she asks Father, after a long phone conversation with one of Father’s supporters.
“I did no such thing,” he says, sounding surprised. “I only told the old rascal that at this rate, he could retire to a Cinnamon Gardens villa in a few years.”
“He caught the innuendo – he is no fool. And why do you continue to patronise his stall if you think he is cheating you?”
“That’s the way it goes, my dear. He expects me to argue and I expect him to raise prices. Then we bargain and we’re both happy.”
Obviously, Father is doing well in the bargaining department because all Mother’s bridge crowd at the club try to coincide their marketing with Father’s schedule. The stories they tell her about Father are enough to make her stop playing the game altogether.
He doesn’t understand her annoyance. “In India, we bargain over everything,” he tells her, and history has borne out Father’s predictions. Wimalaratne gave his daughter a wedding at a leading hotel in Colombo and retired comfortably to a well built house in the suburbs.
Father attended the housewarming. Later, he told Mother: “That old rascal! Those few cents extra on all his produce has made him a millionaire.”