The Grand Bargain

     I finally reached Arambol. The last bastion of the global hippie movement. The place where peace and love finally came to die.

     The tiny tourist village leading up to the beach was a cramped maze of blue-tarped shops that had yet to open for the season. Better that way. I parked on a small sand embankment next to only four other scooters. I removed my helmet and earphones before a single row of foreigners stretched out along the 21 Coconuts beachfront shack. I became self-conscious and ruffled my helmet hair. Except everyone was too busy staring into their phones to even notice. The blonde next to where I sat absently picked at a cucumber salad with eyes that never left her MacBook Air. I asked the waiter for the wireless password. It was nothing more than the name of the place. Except with no 's' at the end of it, clarified one Australian with longish hair and a small sling wrapped around his right forearm. Maybe it was his way of striking up a conversation. Maybe he had been expecting me to ask him where he was from, how long he had been here and where else he had travelled. The 'committed traveller vibe' Lonely Planet spoke so fondly of. I asked no such questions. There'd be plenty of jewellery sellers from Karnataka to keep him answering. In the meantime, a couple sitting at the table to his left picked up the conversational slack.

     I ordered a watermelon juice and two aloo parathas. Proudly. The curd was the waiter's suggestion - a compromise for his establishment's lack of coriander chutney. It would be extra. I accepted the charges and got back to reading. Quietly, Arundhati Roy had become the other Bengali teacher in my life. Never-ending lessons into the subtle complexities of Indian culture 101. Through her words I was stealing greedy glances into what was often bubbling beneath the surface. It sure beat travel talk. My breakfast arrived late and I ate until I could eat no more. The waiter had overestimated my appetite. There would be more leftovers for the dogs hanging out underneath the tables. I kept reading. 

     The beach was pretty much deserted except for the standard pack of Indian men horsing around in knee-deep waves to my far left. The lifeguards would soon drive over, turn on the loudspeaker and tell the tourists to cut it out in severe Hindi. And the Indians would emerge with heads hung low, like overgrown children. A brunette in a black bikini, meanwhile, dove through the waves to my more immediate right. The lifeguards said nothing. So I did the same. The sun was blazing. I managed maybe an hour in it and then ducked into the next shack over for a mango juice. The host who ushered me in was a youngish Nepali from a small town in West Bengal. He worked in Goa for maybe seven months of the year, migrating South with the trekking tourists around the Himalayas once the Monsoon was done. He'd go home when the tourists went home. He preferred tourists to Indians any day of the week - and maybe twice on Sundays. We spoke about the former North-Indian boss of his who drank his own heart under the table; about how things could go very wrong for an outsider looking for work in Bombay; and how he'd been dreaming of visiting Jaisalmer since watching some Bollywood flick whose name escapes me; and about the one huge Banyan tree just beyond the sweet lake behind Arambol's scenic cliff to our right, where one determined (and broke) Russian tourist slept every night despite all the mosquitos. Only the jewellery sellers from Karnataka interrupted the conversation now and again, persistent and unable to help themselves. Their daughters asked for cold Pepsis and then accused you of playing favourites if you obliged one. The restaurant manager shooed them away, the way you would stray dogs.
     I followed some cool music down the beach and set up shop next to a pair of girls so that I wouldn't have to worry about my things. We could take turns playing watchmen while the others swam. The redhead was reading aloud to the blonde, who was doing her best to pretend she was sleeping. They both looked like they had been in the sun way too long. Another jewelry seller from Karnataka had tracked me down. Sunita gave me the usual spiel about needing a little of my luck. There had been no sales for the last three days. She and her four daughters had pre-empted the tourist season. Except only the cops were around these days. They often confiscated their goods and refused to grant them licenses for any amount of money. Much easier to pocket funds from outsiders. I could relate.
     She thought I looked a little too brown to be Canadian. I told her that maybe India was starting to rub off on me. She laughed and showed me what she had. A silver ashtray with a folding lid caught my eye. It was already starting to bronze in certain places. She asked me to name my price. I asked her to name hers instead. She asked for 650 rupees. I repeated the amount like it was the craziest thing I had ever heard. I shook my head and told her she was in way over her head. My Italian mother had laid the foundation and India had taught me the pleasures of running a hard bargain. She laughed. I laughed as well. She asked me how much I had paid for the elephant bed sheet I was now using as my towel. I told her. She didn't believe me. She asked for my best price again. When I told her 100 she kept on laughing, although with more concern now. She started talking about profit margins and asked for a fresh start. One more price for each of us, she demanded. I told her I didn't need this ashtray. I took her hand and told her she'd have much better luck with any of the tourists who had just gotten here. We haggled and laughed some more. She asked me my final price and I told her I'd give her 150 but only because I had really enjoyed the company. I ended up giving her 180 because none of us had the proper change.
     She thanked me and I wished her good luck. I wished her a good season full of sucker tourists from the bottom of my heart. And I wished that no cop would ever bother Sunita or her four children again.