I’m not sure what they teach in the Tourism classes at BHU. They probably learn about how to manage itineraries, how global issues impact the tourism industry, currency exchange, etc. At some point they’re probably shown a graph of popularly bought items. All your common tourist necessities are on there. Om necklaces. Om earrings. Om shirts. Ganesh shirts. Loose-fitting hippie pants. Toilet paper. All are popular with American stoners and Japanese sitar students. But on this graph of what people like to buy, there are a few outlying points, which I bet they ignore.
Maybe it’s a symptom of seen-it-all-itis (a condition from which one’s eyes swell from having seen one too many signs reading, “Pasmina shals! Ali baba pants! Ganesh and Shiva Batiks!”) but we Bridge Year students seem to be drawn to less conventional souvenirs.
Maybe, living in a city which Mark Twain proclaimed “older than history,” a city in which it seems it has all been done before, we yearn to do something original.
We have requests they’ve never heard before, and most certainly never will again. A marble image of Shiva, yes. A massive 10,000 rupee Bust of Andrew Finkelstein, no.
We like to start out by hitting the second-hand t-shirt piles in Godolia. They’re down the street some ways, far from where any tourists come. Earth-tone baggy pants are replaced with bedazzled jeans, fluorescent, sparkly, plastic, fur vests, and shirts that read “FIYER and ICE Pink WORLD’S LARGEST CHICAGO.” (Yeah, what?) If you dig through these unfortunate fashion choices, you can find some real gems. I bought, for instance, a shirt reading “FRESHNESS,” followed by dictionary definitions 1-8 of freshness, including “8. Rested and ready to engage with the enemy immeediatelt.” To add awesome to injury, it glows in the dark.
When we passed a gated courtyard filled with all varieties of marble sculptures and busts, Andrew started heading in. Minutes later we were standing beside him, laughing as he tried for the fourth time to explain that yes, he actually wanted a marble statue of his own face and how much would that cost him? (The answer, for those interested, is 10,000 rupees. I’m thinking of starting a Facebook group to raise money to put Andrew’s gorgeous features in stone. If he does it, maybe we could all go for a sitting, and leave behind our busts in the program house as one of the creepiest welcomes next year’s Bridge Year students will receive.)
A rusty loudspeaker outside a shop caught the eye of the boys, who immediately recognized its potential for excellence at Princeton football games. After a few test calls of “GO TIGERS” and “Twenty fourTEEN!” into the shopkeeper’s ear, for just 300 rupees, it became Joe’s. Once inside the shop, Andrew also bought a mostly-empty bottle of Battery Acid, which (once thoroughly cleaned and filled with water that he can “accidentally” spill on friends) promises to be a fun party game.
There’s a small convenience store near Assi that sells eggs, instant pasta, biscuits – you know, normal small market fare – and it would be unremarkable were the store not named “MODERN ART GALLERY.” While little modern art is to be found inside, aside from the possible Campbell’s tomato soup can, we have managed to find modern art in some unlikely places.
“Hey Joe, need some old appliances?” laughed Andrew as we passed a store that didn’t appear to sell anything that worked. “Actually,” he reconsidered, “I’m going in.”
We looked around the shop at the frayed wires, wondering if they had any use in our lives, the old remote controls, wondering if we needed anything controlled. And then we saw it. A 1 x 1.5 foot metal board stuck with maybe twenty different types of electricity indicator buttons. They were rectangular, circular, oval, red, green, blue, purple – maybe it’s been a while since we’ve seen good art, but God, it was beautiful.
The store owner was confused. “Sample hai.”
Yeah, we know. Can we buy it?
“Nahi. SAMPLE.”
YES. Samples. We want the samples.
He calculated the cost of all those buttons in his head. 1,200 rupees. Do we want it? Andrew told Joe to test out the buttons, see if they were worth that much. Joe reached for the board, when all three men leaped to stop him. “NO!!” We ended up not buying the board, which had 220 volts of electricity running through it, and would have badly electrocuted Joe.
But think for a moment about the boy in the loudspeaker store. I’m sure he met up with his buddies later, the ones whose families run the baggy-pants stores. “You know, these foreigners… you’ve got it all wrong. They don’t seem to want Ali Baba pants. What they really want is battery acid.”
If we keep this up, Banaras is going to be a pretty weird scene. Added to the touts of “Hello Madam, nice silk scarves, cheap cheap price!” will be little men eagerly advertising their stores’ supplies of indicator lights. “Hello madam, loudspeaker? Battery acid? And good good marble, is looking like you.”
I say they update their stock, imeediatelt.
