A few months into the job, I was asked to visit a client in Canada. Probably, I had never felt worthy enough to fly in a plane, let alone go overseas, so I had never applied for a passport.
“What a missed opportunity to devour the free, expensive scotch that they served on international flights!” I mourned.
Those were the days when it took two months at best to get a passport issued. Resolving not to miss another opportunity, I immediately applied for a tatkal passport and received it in about two months, just before another travel opportunity showed up.
“What saab! This is your passport. You will go to a foreign country and mint dollars, and only 100 rupees tip for me?” the postman taunted as he handed the passport to me. For some reason, the postman naturally assumed that a passport translated to dollars and they deserved a cut from the whole passport-foreign-travel deal; a birthright.
The moment of touching the fresh passport for the first time is so overwhelmingly happy that you forget all mathematics of money, and adding another 100 rupee note to the tip comes easy, so I obliged. A happy moment for both of us indeed!
Promptly after, my passport was crowned with the Canadian visa; a glossy stamp that not only reflected light but also adorned the passport. Coupled with traveler’s checks worth 1100 Canadian dollars and a Korean Airways flight ticket, I was cruising across the oceans along with two other colleagues, Harish and Chetan.
The client had already arranged accommodation for us when we landed in Vancouver. I was allotted a two-bedroom apartment that looked like a haunted house (what a coincidence for a phasmophobic!) while Harish and Chetan were moved into a luxury duplex in a high-rise building.
Harish and Chetan had come fully prepared. Harish had filled an entire check-in bag with pulses and beans, while Chetan filled his with rice and a gazillion cups of noodles in case they couldn’t find vegetarian food in Vancouver. I, on the other hand, came with an empty bag; severely ill-prepared. While they cooked and relished warm Indian food every evening, I regretted having only a bowl of milk and cereals…and sometimes chocolates. When I could not take it anymore, I decided to do something about it.
“Is there a vegetarian restaurant in the area?” I asked Ryan, my Canadian colleague, one morning in the office.
“Sure. There is a Subway around the corner. I believe they serve veggie sandwiches,” he said.
Those were the days when most people had not heard of Subway in India…at least, I had not. And when you are a vegetarian Hindu in a foreign land, anything that has veggie on the menu sounds like a godsend. I was ecstatic with the idea of warm vegetarian food that evening.
When Peppers aren’t just Black and Round
I visited the Subway around the corner that my colleague Ryan had recommended and stood in line for my turn to order while also scanning the menu for vegetarian options. By the time it was my turn to order, I had already narrowed down my choice to a “Veggie Delite” sandwich.
“How may I help you, sir?” the lady behind the counter asked.
“I would like to order a Veggie Delite sandwich, please,” I responded.
“Sure. And what would you like in your sandwich?” she asked, pointing towards the array of containers filled with vibrant vegetables and cheese.
I was not prepared for this. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that I had to choose my vegetables and cheese for the sandwich. Nevertheless, I quickly recovered and proclaimed, “Umm… I would like spinach, tomato, lettuce, and… uh, capsicum,” as I pointed to each ingredient in turn.
“Capsi… what?” she was confused.
I thought she probably couldn’t hear me, so I raised my voice and repeated, “Capsicum… Capsicum.”
“We don’t carry that, sir!” she still had a confused look on her face.
“I can clearly see the capsicum in one of the containers, so why is she saying that she does not have it? Is it because of my accent?” I wondered. Now, it was my turn to be confused.
“Of course, you do! It is right here… this one!” I pointed towards the container filled with capsicum slices.
“Well, sir, that is green pepper,” she corrected me as she picked up the capsicum slices.
I was baffled. The pepper I knew was black in color and round in shape. What I was looking at was nowhere close to the pepper I knew. I had tried my best to play along but failed miserably. I felt embarrassed but quickly forgave myself. Different land, different lingo.
Coffee with a twist
It was Halloween and everyone was dressed in the scariest and creepiest costumes they could. It was a strange sight, sometimes scary, at times funny, to see people in weird costumes…Ghostface, Alien, Superman, Witch, you name it. We were puzzled at the idea behind it.
“I don’t understand. What the hell is going on here?”
Chetan asked hoping one of us may have done some research on the subject.
“Fuck it. None of our business!” Harish said because he had no explanation for it either.
“Yeah, fuck it. But what do we do with the gift card?” I said, taking my five dollars Starbucks gift card out of my pocket that our client had distributed earlier in the day to celebrate Halloween with a coffee.
Chetan’s eyes were sparkling to look at the gift card.
“I suggest, my dear friends, that we go and grace our taste buds with the revered Starbucks coffee.” Chetan said as he took out his card from his pocket.
“I have heard a lot about Starbucks and I’m curious to know what’s so great about it.” He continued.
Since everyone agreed, we headed to a Starbucks that was just two blocks away. It was already dark outside, and mercury had dropped below zero. The street was bustling with Halloween celebrations; people in their weird costumes posing in their best act. We were cold as hell, looking forward to a hot coffee to warm ourselves up. It was a busy evening at Starbucks too. We stood in line waiting for our turn to order; Harish being ahead of us started scanning through the menu.
“Do you know what this Caramel Macchiato is?” Harish asked turning his head almost 180 degrees to us like an Arctic snowy owl.
“No man. Never heard of it.” Chetan replied promptly, as confused as Harish.
“Me neither.” I added.
“Hmm…And what’s this Frappuccino thingy?” He turned his head again after taking another glance at the menu.
“No idea.” Both of us replied in unison.
“This is an alien menu,” Harish was now whispering “I don’t know what to order but we have to spend this 5 dollars gift card.”
“Yeah, man. Can’t waste it. It’s almost…” Chetan had already started doing the calculation looking up at the ceiling and tapping his index finger on his chin “175 rupees?”
Everyone nodded at the genius of Chetan.
“You’re right. Let’s play safe and order what we are familiar with.” I suggested.
“Espresso?” I continued.
“Done.”
“Done.”
I heard them say the word at the same time.
We ordered 3 espressos and when we picked up our coffees, we were beyond surprised.
“What kind of joke is this? The cup is so big, and the coffee quantity is so little!” Chetan said furiously.
“What a waste of 175 rupees!” He added further.
We were all confused and did not know what to do with it. We didn’t want to ask the lady at the counter either because we were not sure if this was some Canadian thing we were unaware of.
“Maybe that’s the way Canadians drink.” Harish said patting Chetan’s shoulders.
We took our cups and exited the shop.
“Yuck! This is so bitter!” Chetan took the first sip and almost threw up.
“Is this the shit Starbucks famous for?” He added visibly outraged.
By now Harish and I had also taken our first sip and we could totally feel Chetan’s pain.
“Guys, I saw cream cups and a sugar jar by the counter. Maybe we were supposed to add them ourselves?” I recalled.
“That’s it! That’s how it’s done…Looks like they don’t premix it here like in India.” Harish acknowledged.
“Oh. A bunch of retards” said an irritated Chetan “let’s go back and add cream and sugar to make it worthy of drinking.”
“I don’t know about you guys but I’m not going back in there to make a fool of myself. They all have seen us exit the shop.” Harish resisted.
“Me neither.” I supported Harish.
“Okay. Then here. I don’t want to kill myself with this poison.” A tormented Chetan said throwing his cup in the nearby garbage bin. We complied and followed him as he walked away in disgust and agony of having wasted 175 rupees.
Bargaining is in our blood
One of the hot commodities to buy from an overseas trip in those days was a camcorder since they were expensive in India, if at all available. It belonged to the affluent class and I wanted a piece of it too. I was able to save about 900 dollars of the 1100 allowance and a decent camcorder was well within the budget.
I got myself a Sony tape-based camcorder from a local electronics gadgets store Radioshack for about 800 dollars and it wasn’t too long before I started recording everything; people, buildings, streets, stores, even a couple who would make out on the other side of my apartment with their room window rolled down.
I was proudly showing my footage to Ryan at lunch the next day when it caught his attention.
“You sneaky son of a bitch! You got them on camera?” He almost threw up the morsel of food he was chewing.
“Don’t blame me! They had their windows rolled down.” I defended.
“But why are you surprised? I thought you guys are cool about it…No? I see that in Hollywood movies all the time.” I added to my defense.
Ryan was probably still working in his puzzled mind, to respond to my enormously stupid defense when I cut his thoughts short.
“But I think I got ripped on this camcorder deal.”
“What now? You wanted a bigger zoom for a close-in of the couple?” said a sarcastic Ryan.
“Stop it, Ryan. I think I could get a camcorder as well as a digital camera from London Drugs for the price of this camcorder.
I figured I could have had a better deal on the camcorder from another store I visited two days later. Every dollar saving was important, but I was not sure if RadioShack would return such an expensive item; “Bika hua maal vapas nahi hoga (Sold items won’t be returned)” is the signboard they hang in stores in India exactly for such reasons. But someone told me that they had fifteen days “no question asked” return policy. I was highly skeptical about it and thought it was just a marketing gimmick. But, I went back to Radioshack to try my luck anyway.
“Hello, I’m sorry but I’d like to return the camcorder.” I said handing over the camcorder to him.
“Okay. Anything wrong with it?” He asked.
“No. I just ran out of my budget.”
“Okay. Would you like to take a look at anything else that fits your budget?” He asked.
Just to be polite, I took a round in the store and returned to him.
“I did not find anything else that I would be interested in purchasing. I guess I will just return this one.”
“Sure, no problem.” And he handed over the cash to me.
I came out of the store in a happy disbelief. “That’s all it takes to return such an expensive item? No arguments, No hassles, No mess! Try that in India. I thought and headed to the London Drugs store.
Once in the store, I scanned through their electronics section and narrowed down to an Olympus 3.2 MP digital camera and a tape-based Sony Handycam. The total cost of both was around 900 CAD however after having bought gifts for my family, I was left with about 800 CAD that I got back from RadioShack return, so I started testing my bargaining skills with the associate. His name was Jeremy.
“Hey man, look I’m buying two items. Give me a deal please.” I asked Jeremy.
“Sorry Sir, those items are already discounted. I can’t do any better.” He replied in negation.
“Jeremy, look you’re a drug store and I’m sure you don’t sell too many electronics items every day and here I am buying two expensive items right now. Come on man, I came here after returning a camcorder to RadioShack just to buy these two items. You’ve got to give me a deal!”
“Okay. Hold on Sir. Let me speak to my manager and see what I can do.” He said and went inside.
A few minutes later he reappeared and said. “Okay, Sir. I spoke to my manager and we can do $850 for both.”
“Oh no, no, Jeremy. That’s just 50 dollars discount. That’s not a deal. How about we do $700.
“Oh no, Sir. That is impossible! That’s below our purchase price. Can’t do 750” He said.
“Look, Jeremy. I came from India all the way. And when I go back, I will give your card to my colleagues. That will bring you more customers when they visit here. And that will be very soon.” I tried to entice him.
Jeremy took a pause, thought for a few seconds, and went back to the manager. A few minutes later, he reappeared and said.
“Okay, Sir. 800”
“But Jeremy…” And before I could say anything, he almost begged me not to bargain further.
“I’m sorry, Sir but I really can’t go one penny down from here.”
The deal was set. I paid him 800 CAD and bought the digital camera and camcorder. I was the happiest man on the planet that day.
“Please don’t forget to give my card to your colleagues, Sir!” Jeremy said handing over a bunch of his business cards to me and bid goodbye to me.
Armed with a camera, I decided to take a train ride to explore the city. While I was on the train, I spotted a young teenage couple making out. I had never seen anything like that before. I was disgusted yet thrilled at the same time. Disgusted because it was shocking for me to see an open expression of intimacy that I had never seen in India and thrilled because deep down somewhere I liked the freedom to be able to do so. I looked around and nobody bothered to look at them. Everyone was busy doing their own thing. “What is this? These kids are shameless! And what’s wrong with these people? Why isn’t anybody saying anything to them?” I wondered. “Well, I must also mind my own business like everyone else, I guess.” I thought while continuing to look at them with peripheral vision and waiting for my station.
On the last day when I was all set to leave for the airport, I realized that I did not even have money to pay for the cab! My colleague’s trip had been extended by a week, so I had to leave alone. They had already ventured out to explore the city that day so there was no chance to borrow money from them. The cab was scheduled to pick me up at 10 am and it was already past 9 am. I was in a panic. I did not know what to do. Suddenly, it occurred to me that I could return one of the gifts that I had bought for the family. And after the RadioShack experience, I was certain I will get my money back. So, I rushed to the Sears store where I had purchased some jewelry for my mom. It was just 10 minutes walk by foot and that was the quickest return I could make. I reached the store by 9:30 am but realized that the store opened only at 10 am. So, I stood there in the cold waiting for the store to open. As soon as the store opened, I ran into the jewelry department to return the jewelry.
“Good Morning Ma’am. I need to return this jewelry and here is the receipt.” I said handing over the receipt to her.
“What happened, Sir? You don’t like the jewelry?” She asked.
“Ma’am I love the jewelry, but I have to return it.” I replied.
“Okay. Would you like me to show you something else that you may like instead?” She asked politely.
I was getting impatient now. My cab was going to arrive at any moment, and I had a flight to catch so I had to tell her the truth to avoid any further conversation.
“Ma’am…the thing is…I have run out of money and I don’t even have money to pay for the cab to reach to the airport. So, I must return this item to get some money to pay for the cab!”
That was it. She did not speak a word and immediately took the return and handed me over the money.
I took a sigh of relief and ran back to the hotel. I was just in time when the cab arrived. I was able to catch my flight on time. Little did I know back then that I would be returning to Canadian soil exactly 12 years later, but this time in my BMW convertible!
