Wrapping deals in Sunday Bazaar

Sunday bazaar is the place where you can find a myriad of people, from the Afghani vendor selling huge shopping bags and insists on speaking in English – his standard words would be something like this: very good shopping bags, only Rs 10 for you, very good, very strong, very beautiful, thank you, good bye, have a nice day – and no matter how hard you try, he will not utter a word in Urdu, to a begum sahiba whose driver will block the way bang in the middle of the way so that begum sahiba will not have to take one extra step, to a ubiquitous British gay couple (I swear, I always bump into one or the other) to a girl you knew in fifth grade and have no interest in rekindling the contact, but she would wave at you anyway.

I wanted to buy Samuel Butler’s “The way of all Flesh” and when I couldn’t find it at Liberty Books, I thought I should try my luck at Sunday Bazaar’s book stalls. Although I couldn’t find anything by Mr. Butler – the bookseller insisted on calling him Samuel Butter and kept thrusting Mills & Boon my way saying, “baby, larkiyan tau ajkal yehi ley raheen hain (I was secretly flattered that he thought i was a teenager looking for M&Bs) - I met another kind that I never expected to see at Sunday Bazaar: the rich who do their business in the middle of second hand shoe stalls. While I was trying to jostle my way ahead, I saw a really cute guy and I said to myself, “At last, some eye candy!” He was talking a girl and then I heard them and stopped in my tracks. Apparently the guy was managing an investment portfolio for that girl and she has invested 10 million rupees with him. She was toying with the idea of investing another 5 million and the man was insisting that she do that with him. The girl did not look too eager, but the guy, with his charm and good looks must have persuaded her to invest the aforementioned 5 million.

This business conversation amidst haggling aunties and vendors got me thinking; who needs posh restaurants and golf clubs to conduct when you can do it in the dusty stalls of Sunday Bazaar? Just take your client for a bit of aloo gobhi shopping and wrap deals worth millions, what say? But it can only work when you happen to be as good looking as that guy and the client has to be a single, unattached receptive female. On a side note, I thanked God that they were carrying that conversation in English, had they been talking in Urdu; the girls must have been kidnapped for ransom by now.