From the haggler's corner

Housewives honed their haggling skills on the pave-ments of NSC Bose Road.

The man looked up from the large stacks of handkerchiefs, widened his eyes and looked incredulously at my mother.

“Amma, you’re quoting a price that wouldn’t even fetch me a glass of water. I can give you five rupees less for your sake,” he said, placing his hand protectively on the creamy white, blue and red handkerchiefs neatly folded and stacked like loaves of bread.

Amma stood obstinately, and the vendor sighed and reduced the rate by two more rupees. When the deal was eventually done and Amma tucked the bunch of handkerchiefs in her leather bag, she bragged, “I could’ve gotten them for even lesser,” with a smile.

Thousands of housewives like her honed their haggling skills on the pavements of the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Road – or NSC Bose Road – that snakes through some of Chennai’s busiest by-lanes.

Hawkers filled every available corner from the beginning of NSC Bose road, on the edge of Wall Tax road in the west to Parry’s Corner in the east. With the Esplanade road joining the stretch after the Flower Bazaar Police Station and King George’s statue, the road is wide for the best part of half a kilometre up to the Parry’s Corner.

It is at this stretch of the road where we found some of the toughest pavement vendors who would never give away a fruit or a piece of vegetable without a hard bargain. And they knew a naïve customer simply by the way they examined the goods and quoted the price.

I remember sauntering up to Burma Bazaar, where a friend of mine suggested I would get a good digital watch for a throw-away price. The friend, a local Gujarati, asked me to keep quiet and let him negotiate.

Sea breeze from the harbour softened the summer heat in the evening, making walking even on a busy stretch like NSC Bose Road pleasanter. We found a watch vendor little further from Dare House, home to the well-known industrial house EID Parry. The man laughingly asked: “How old are you guys?” “Why do you want to know?” My friend retorted, trying to wrong foot him.

The bargain began from Rs 80. My friend managed to bring it down to Rs 30 and put down the piece he held saying, “You’re quoting high.”

The vendor held my friend’s hand saying he should buy what he examined, else he would call the police. At which point I handed him the money, unable to stand the extremes the two were going and anxious about where it would end.

After several decades of hawking everything from handkerchiefs, apparels to leather goods, the vendors were driven away from the pavements of NSC Bose Road recently, thanks to a Madras High Court order declaring the place “no hawking zone”.

The purpose may be to decongest the area, but with High Court complex to the right, Dare House to the left and numerous offices along the stretch, decongesting the place is nearly impossible.