Summer is time for the annual Indian wedding clothes Mrs Page needs to buy for her cousins' weddings in England.
This warrants a post for many reasons:
1. To an Indian girl - and Mrs P is Indian born in the UK, living in the USA, that most complicated of women - if someone is not an actual sister, they're a cousin, or an aunt. I've tried to explain that someone's not really your cousin unless they're your parent's siblings' kids, but apparently the family tree works differently for Indians.
2. An Indian wedding, even - or maybe especially - one in England, calls for several days of celebrations, with several parties and naturally, several changes of loud clothes. Maybe that should be .. several loud changes of clothes, but either way if you live in San Francisco it requires traipsing down University Avenue in Berkeley to see what's available.
3. To a white, adult male, married or not, every store looks like an explosion in a paint factory, caused by glitter grenades. And it's downright impossible to tell one outfit from the rest when it's folded among hundreds of clear, plastic bags on a shelf.
4. There's no such thing as a sticker price. Or at least, nothing that anyone takes a blind bit of notice of. I was given my warning as we pulled up at the first store. "Don't you get involved in any discussion about price. I'll do that", I was told. Therefore, in full knowledge that she was going to spend several hundred dollars per outfit, she explained to the first assistant "I'm looking for something around two hundred dollars; something bright, something modern". Now, having already admitted to suffering the dual curse of being white and male, I have to say that EVERYTHING in the store was BRIGHT, and EVERYTHING looked to be the same style. I know I'll lose that part of the argument, but I may as well start out with that position. Regarding the alleged sticker price, or absence thereof, she was shown a saree with a price tag of seventeen hundred dollars, and the shop assistant said "that one will be seven hundred and ninety five". What's the point in wasting money on price tags if everyone immediately quotes a lower price. I'm not fooled by that, and I hope that Mrs P - oh, wait, she's fallen for it.
5. When the assistants - for no shopper in these parts gets just one assistant - start tearing open the plastic bags, only to be met with stares and shakes of the head from her ladyship, and words like "No, I want something for the evening reception", they all respond with "Oh, you want something NICE?" I thought "nice" was one of those unspoken prerequisites, but clearly it signaled "Oh, you intend spending more than two hundred dollars".
6. Anyhow, cutting to the chase - which wasn't much of a chase seeing as it lasted nearly four hours, and was punctuated after two hours by me returning to our car for a well earned rest - madame exited the store with two lavish outfits, suitably modified to fit in all the right places.
All I can say is, it's a bloody good job she looks so good in them.
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