February 19, 2004
Money, Business, Shopping.
Before you come to India, you know that it's going to be an inexpensive place to live for a few months. Only when you get here do you realise how inexpensive it can be. The way you relate to money definitely changes.
The Euro-Rupee exchange rate at the moment is hovering around 57 rupees to the Euro. 5500 rupees is just under 100 euro. You could easily live for a week on that. Food, chai, accommodation, transport everything, assuming that you are not shopping like a mad thing and are staying in a reasonably modest hostel. 5000 rupees is what a state schoolteacher (seen as a very good job) earns per month. A four-bedroom apartment to rent in Delhi costs about 6000 per month. A Thali (basic dinner) costs about 25 rupees. My wee hut in the Sai Baba garden costs 80 rupees per night.
Of course, then you’re seen as a walking goldmine by touts, some priests and traders who will do their utmost to try and separate you from your rupees. At train stations, bus stations, airports and tourist towns you will get pursued down the streets by a mix of touts and beggars. Shops and Restaurants will try to get away with outrageous margins, counting on your not knowing the true price of things. The Hindus have a saying here "He who does not know the price of something, knows very little"
You'll be told that your hotel has closed or burned down, be brought to a similarly named but rival hotel. Or even to the other part of town to a completely unrelated hotel by a cycle rickshaw driver who never understood where you wanted to go in the first place, but just kept nodding, desperate for the cash.
You often get hotels calling themselves after other successful hotels in the same town so that the touts can confuse the newcomers. Here in Pushkar there are two "Moon palace" hostels, called "Moon A" and "Moon B" by the locals.
Nevertheless, once you get a feel for the value of the Rupee you find yourself complaining when you are overcharged, even by ten or twenty Rupees. There are few worse feelings than that of having been fleeced because of your own lack of savvy. These traders know a mark when they see one.
Once you get through the "veil of overcharge" which surrounds you on arrival, you can start to get fair prices for things. This usually happens after you get a chance to play one trader off another at a market or from intelligence gathered from other travelers in restaurants. If you look like you mean business and have some Hindi, the prices go lower still.
It's difficult to explain that the money you have does not make you a wealthy person in Europe, since the rents etc. are all proportionately higher, not to mention the fact that you worked hard for it. Most Indians are just agog at how much you have and what it would mean for them to have that much. How much is your digi camera? 45,000 Rupees. A generous year's pay for many. It is a moral quandary at times whether you talk about money at all. Certainly it can bring a state of moral unease onto you at times and a very lucky feeling at others.
The saga of the parcel
In my first week here I was shopping like a mad thing. Partly to get to know the town, the real prices of things and partly as a pleasurable means of settling in. It's good to have a big parcel on the way back to Dublin as I write. It means I've done most of the shopping already, I won't have to lug all that stuff around with me and the recipients of the parcel get the buzz of their gifts before I get back.
I got lush Rajasthani wall hangings, multicoloured saris, handmade cushion covers, pashmina silk scarves, clothes, bags and hand-crafted diary books. Mala beads, ganesh design tee shirts. Every day I would bring another small bagful of stuff to the shop where I was buying most of the goods and finally, they sewed it up in a 12 kilo parcel to bring to the post office.
I went instead to a parcel service on the main street. They post it for you and if there's a problem, they'll follow through with the Indian postal service on your behalf. I chose "Sea and Air" which cost about 2200 rupees to send. Good job I sent it with them, as it turned out that Ireland does not participate in this "sea and air" type of freight, only Air. The parcel office were able to sort this out for me and it saved me from having to go to Delhi to get the parcel upgraded to Air mail. It cost more as a result but will arrive quicker; it should be home in about three weeks.
More Business Ideas
True to form, I came up with an idea for "ShopInPushkar.com". An ecommerce site which would sell directly to online customers from the shops here in the Bazaar, via the private parcel service. Anil, the bloke who runs the parcel service here thought this was a great idea and we spent about 20 minutes over chai drafting one of those "on the napkin" business plans. The costs involved would be very little, comparatively speaking -- per month about Rs. 4k for staff, Rs. 4k for broadband, Rs. 3.5k for a small office in Pushkar and Rs. 2k for utilities. The potential would be huge but it would take at least a year to do it properly and the logistics and legalities could get convoluted. Since I'm on holiday, I'm not going near it for the moment but I reckon it could fly in a big way.
The other one was to open a "green" hostel, family friendly, using organic veggies in the food, using bio-filtration for waste management, collecting the abundant energy from the sun for hot water and lights. Catering also for those traveling with their children, which seems to be an increasing trend here. Many of the travelers I've met have brought their kids. I reckon with that spin and practice present at the guesthouse you'd get exactly that niche of traveler. Germans and Scandinavians particularly. Here in Pushkar at the moment the most numerous nationalities seem to be the French and the ubiquitous Israelis.
I've already mentioned the solar hot water heating panels to Fatou and he's been interested in them for a while. I'll try to get some plans to give to him. It could save the whole village tons of money in the somewhat erratic and expensive electricity supply, not to mention all those fossil fuels not burnt. More about sustainability in a later blog, after I visit the Barefoot College.