On Friday, seeing as dad was going to be at work, mom wanted me to come shopping with her. Normally I would wince at the thought of going shopping for things like curtains and bedsheets but this was a handicrafts exhibition and I was really curious. It turned out to be a lot of fun. So much fun that our plan to get out of the place in an hour went out of the window and we ended up spending a great deal of time and money at the place.
The exhibition was mainly meant to showcase the Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) project, which was incidentally started by N. Chandrababu Naidu (suck on that YSR!). I was given to understand by the stall managers they got the stalls and space for free and so they in turn were selling their merchandise for significant discounts.
The merchandise was significantly diverse. They were selling made from cloth (bedsheets, towels, lungis, kerchiefs, clothes for men and women and children), wood (furniture, toys, puppets), fibre (supension chairs, more toys) and an assortments of other material like animal horns, leather and clay. The DWCRA project was started in a bunch of places but it was successful only in AP. As a result, while there were stalls from all over India - Goa, Kerala, Rajasthan etc. - the stalls from AP were a lot more in number and hence, represented a lot of parts of AP that even I didn't now. It was nice to see a lot of Telugu being spoken and I loved the sales banter that went on in the stores.
In one store, the saleslady started adding food items to our bag without asking and when we tried to stop her we got a dose of one of the most efficient sales pitch I'd ever heard - just a simple, "Oh come on, these are good, just try them." One guy sold his incense sticks by telling us, "If you don't like the smell of the sticks, bring them back and I'll refund your Rs. 20 and pay you Rs. 50 for the auto charges." Another guy sold us honey by insisting that the higher price was worth it since they made honey only 2 month of the year. (This guy has honey from the flowers of Aloe Vera!!)
Poor mom, she walked around even with her hurt knee. And what's more, we brought dad to the same place the next day and made him walk around for about an hour.
The exhibition was mainly meant to showcase the Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) project, which was incidentally started by N. Chandrababu Naidu (suck on that YSR!). I was given to understand by the stall managers they got the stalls and space for free and so they in turn were selling their merchandise for significant discounts.
The merchandise was significantly diverse. They were selling made from cloth (bedsheets, towels, lungis, kerchiefs, clothes for men and women and children), wood (furniture, toys, puppets), fibre (supension chairs, more toys) and an assortments of other material like animal horns, leather and clay. The DWCRA project was started in a bunch of places but it was successful only in AP. As a result, while there were stalls from all over India - Goa, Kerala, Rajasthan etc. - the stalls from AP were a lot more in number and hence, represented a lot of parts of AP that even I didn't now. It was nice to see a lot of Telugu being spoken and I loved the sales banter that went on in the stores.
In one store, the saleslady started adding food items to our bag without asking and when we tried to stop her we got a dose of one of the most efficient sales pitch I'd ever heard - just a simple, "Oh come on, these are good, just try them." One guy sold his incense sticks by telling us, "If you don't like the smell of the sticks, bring them back and I'll refund your Rs. 20 and pay you Rs. 50 for the auto charges." Another guy sold us honey by insisting that the higher price was worth it since they made honey only 2 month of the year. (This guy has honey from the flowers of Aloe Vera!!)
Poor mom, she walked around even with her hurt knee. And what's more, we brought dad to the same place the next day and made him walk around for about an hour.
No comments:
Post a Comment