The Tact Of Haggling

The Tact of Haggling

In every city, there’s usually a street that’s particularly famous for its utterly crooked alleys and most dingy shops a human mind can envisage. Cheap caps and bags and belts and hats are often hung out for display in such places like chicken in a butcher’s den and one can commonly witness countless heated bargains all day that usually end in the shopkeepers giving in to the customer’s highly lessened prices in desperate impatience.
There one such place in this city by the name of High Street Lane; though the reasons of it are quite unknown (at least to me). One might wonder, and with good reason… was there no better name in the world? Similar had been my almost instant reaction when my friend had first taken me there a year ago and familiarized me with its name.
High Street Lane!
I still remember myself with my greatly raised eyebrows and the expressively incredulous expression I had given when I had heard it!
“Why?” was all I could ask.
“I have no idea!” my friend had replied, with an amused look.
I decided to eat back a comment that had sprung up in my mouth and allowed him to take me inside.
And so we did…
It was a different world. Three and a half feet wide space separated the display windows of the shops on either side. ‘We had to squeeze and walk’ would be an understatement. I had my mouth hanging open. People jostling against each other as if they were in a highly narrow local train! My friend had months of experience in battling his way through and soon enough I learnt the method of managing my way too.
And it soon transpired that it was one of the most interesting places to see different varieties of objects and goods and people. My friend told me that the shopkeepers usually tell a very high price initially and you have to haggle or you are a fool. Some people we found, readily paid the amount the shopkeepers demanded. My friend snorted sadly at their ignorance to the fact that they could’ve bought the thing in quarter the price.
Personally I am not very good at haggling. That sort of person who would buy a hundred rupees book or bag for seventy or eighty. But when one of the shopkeepers told the price of a handsome chain as a hundred and fifty, my friend gave a sarcastic sneer and said “Thirty!”
Both I and the shopkeeper stared at him in surprise. From a hundred and fifty to thirty! One fifth! I would’ve said a hundred and ten if I was in his place.
“Not possible!” said the shop owner with a small sarcastic laugh.
“Fine!” said my friend. “We’re leaving!”
He beckoned me and we took a step away when…
“Wait!” the shop owner shouted anxiously. “Hundred!”
“Thirty!” my friend replied calmly.
“Eighty!”
My friend snorted again. “You get such a chain at twenty! Be grateful I’m ready to give thirty!”
“Seventy!”
“Thirty five!”
“Sixty!”
“Forty, last price!”
“Fifty!” the shopkeeper said panicking. “That’s way too down now!”
“Forty!” my friend replied firmly.
There was silence. Finally the shopkeeper dropped his shoulders in defeat.
“Have it your way!” he accepted.
One minute later, we were walking away, the chain shining merrily around my friend’s neck.
“You bought it at forty!” I asked incredulously.
“Yeah!” he grinned simply. “Piece of cake it is, haggling. You just need the right tact!”
I nodded, mind still on ‘how did that shopkeeper sell it so cheap?!’
But I learnt that it was normal. Every shop we looked; people were waving their arms demanding correspondingly low prices and the shopkeepers wiping swear off their brows as their goods sank cheaper and cheaper.
There were, however, some shopkeepers that stoutly refused to reduce even a rupee. Most of the either had a massive, menacing profile that did not encourage many to force them or were thin willowy creatures with an absolutely cunning look on their sly faces that made you worry about wallet-snatchers.
The half an hour adventure consisted of similar proceedings that included in my friend buying a couple of books and a keychain with similar bargaining. I observed the variety of human nature in that half hour very minutely and I was pleased with my work.
Humans have a tendency to keep gripping anything they can as long until they have no choice but to give way or suffer losses. Why lose an opportunity to sell anything expensive to a person who might not be familiar with the usual prices? That’s the general motto of these shop owners.
And as we finally left the alley and entered the widely spaced un-dingy world the words re-entered my mind.
“You just need the right tact!”
And these words enabled me to be a better bargainer in days to come.

Lateral Thinking (Possibly!)

It is never too early to think about your future and it is never too late to think about your past. But if you get in a desperate dilemma, ‘what if it is early to think about the future’, then here are a few simple and effective steps. Just keep calm for a moment, gather your strength, give yourself a slap and say, ‘it’s not early!’ and start thinking!
There are a number of specimen on our planet who exist to spread boredom and gloominess.
BEWARE!
It could be the bloke sitting next to you in the cinema hall; it could be your next door neighbor… or it could even be YOU!
WHAT THE HELL!
Thinking along these lines would be stupendously stereotypical. So if you have a typical stereo in your house, it might have happened that you must’ve got the disease because of it, but not to worry. Read some magazines like
HOW TO KEEP MIND OFF THINGS
Well the first answer would be to remove your dimly demented mind out of your holy head and chuck it in a … a…. er… back in your head again! Similar to a battery of a mobile phone… get the connection? When your mobile doesn’t work, you take out the battery, count till ten and put it back again. Same thing here.
Pause… pause… pause…
Do you think we’re getting sidetracked from the main discussion of boring species because of our brain antics?
YES WE ARE!
Back to boring species.
Boring species do not come when you expect them. You might be having the fun of your life in a bus or something and a gloom of a human being drops in the dull seat next to you. Little do you know that you’d be soon wishing…
WHY DID I LEAVE MY WALKMAN AT HOME?
First of all, isn’t it a weird name ‘walkman’! As if a man doesn’t know he can walk!
Such type of thoughts start entering your mind when it is sidetracked, when it is shifted from its axis of the ordinary.
So comrades, do you think such behavior should be tolerated by us any longer?
Of course, it should be!
If we are not sidetracked, how will we know that a side track also exists? It’s simple!
Take a cold drink bottle, drain it till the last drop of the liquid inside and then lift the bottle on your fingers, revolve it stupidly as if it’s a spinning object and when it smashes on the floor to a thousand pieces that threaten to break your precious delicate skin membrane causing you give a hair raising shriek of agony… halt!
Wait!
Halt!
Wait!
Halt again!
Now don’t wait… run! You’ve just broken a bottle; you’ll have to pick it up!
But no!
Have the decency to clear the mess you’ve created because of your spinning bottle. Stand up with your head inclined to some angle (every angle has a different meaning, remember that), position it that makes you look something you have never looked before… that’ll take the others’ mind off the thing that just happened right now… and if that doesn’t work, call a disco jockey and tell him to announce a party!
We’re getting sidetracked again.
But, well, when all you wish to do is ‘something sarcastically sophisticated’, you end up being ‘sophisticatedly sarcastic’…
Or sometimes neither this nor that! Ha Ha!
Rub your eyes lazily and look at your bedside table… the alarm clock must be ringing…

Our dreams are usually always as confused as this!
Is this what’s lateral thinking supposed to be?
Possibly!

Mischief Maestros

Mischief Maestros is an organization that exists to spread the message of fun and humor along with goodwill and love. And with un-ignorable laughter!