Woke up late this morning around 9 or 10 and went down for the free breakfast buffet. I had Pav Bhaji, which is the equivalent of sloppy joes but with vegetables and naan instead of meat and white bread. They served chai but it was terrible, nothing like the homemade chai I had the day before.
After breakfast we decided to go to a shoe store, to see how the store employees would react when I asked for a shoe size of 13. My theory was that they would freak out or laugh, but Anup guessed they would get the biggest size they had and then try to convince me it was a good fit. He was right. When I said size 13, they said “Ok sir, no problem” and brought me a size 11, which is the biggest size they carry. He squeezed my foot into it and said it fit very well. I laughed, told him no, and took it off, and so he took me over to the foot measuring tool. They measured my foot and my toes went to the very last measurement notch they had on the tool. At this point he gave up and started helping Anup who was buying some sandals. Anup bought some really nice leather sandals for about $25. They don’t even make sandals of the quality he bought in the U.S., at least not for less than $100.
In India, real estate is very limited in the cities due to the high population, so it forces people to build upwards rather than spread out. In shops and stores in India, rather than keeping inventory in the back of the store like we do in the U.S., they keep it on a floor above the store in order to save space. There are holes in the ceilings and when the store clerk needs something he yells up through the hole and whatever he asks for gets throw down. There are employees who just work on the upper floor and are ready to grab whatever the guy on the bottom floor asks for.
After looking at shoes we bought some roasted peanuts from a street vendor and went back to the hotel. We all try to take somewhat constant breaks at the hotel to regroup and refresh. India is overwhelming.
After resting a bit we went back out and headed for the market in downtown Vadodara. It was so incredibly crowded and hectic, people buying and selling as far as the eye can see. I went into one of the hundreds of sari shops to buy a sari for Rachel. Inside the store there were hundreds of saris folded on the shelves. You tell the clerk what material, color, and pattern you like and he starts pulling saris off the shelves that are similar to what you asked for. Usually the method to buy one is to look at about 20-30 saris, which sounds like a lot but at the pace they pull them it only takes about 15 minutes. Then you separate about 5 of them that you like the most, then pick the best from those 5. They will keep pulling saris until you tell them to stop, and if you don’t, they will literally do it for hours. Anup told me that he went into a sari shop with his grandmother when he was a kid, and she spent 4 hours looking at saris while he sat there and waited. At the rate they pull saris, she could have looked at almost 500 saris!
You have to learn not to feel bad when people pull merchandise off the shelves when you are in India. If you are in a store, you don’t even have to say anything. If they see your gaze on something for more than a second they will grab it and bring it to you. They know that it makes foreigners feel guilty and that they might buy it out of guilt.
After we had walked around in the market, and realizing it’s nothing but the same crap being sold in store after store that look exactly the same, we left and went to Anup’s mom (Nita’s) old house that she grew up in. While she left India for America, her relatives still live in the house. We talked to the people there and then took a tour of the home. We took a lot of video here, as you can see below.
Next we went back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding reception, the 3rd and final day of the wedding. Now the attire was business casual rather than traditional Indian. I am told this is a relatively new development in Indian weddings and that in the past it was always traditional dress.
Went to the reception, which was similar to the ceremony. Just eating and taking pictures. At the wedding ceremony there were 2000 people, and at this reception there was a different set of about 1500 people, who were all from the grooms side. The actual ceremony was mostly composed of the brides side I came to learn. When it was over we went back to our hotel to sleep.
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