Dilly-Dally in Dilli Haat

I don't know why I expected to be seen by someone I know here. That sensation of anticipation - a mixture of excitement and fear - flooded my senses when a woman's body loomed over me. Ultimately she was just pointing at a booth in the distance.

After Plan B met a dead end (aka follow an Auntie around to learn the ropes of bargaining) due to an uninspired role model, I returned to the idealistic movements that I was too hot and tired to carry out moments prior.

Sometimes it takes a middle-aged woman to wake me out of my stupor.

I tried to get the wooden, snake-biting-your-finger box for my new friend, but the boy selling it said that it was 100rs and the Styrofoam letters with their pastel colors seemed to dance as they taunted of the "fixed price" so I smiled and walked off.


Thus, quest for the journal was back on. Not quite sure how much I'd like to pay for it, but remember that at Sapna it was something like 150. I stop at a stall just before the one with the wide array to see how much they're selling theirs for. 150. I wonder if the man selling the toys by constantly showing everyone how they work has any more of a sense of play than the other vendors. Though everyone seems ready to crack a smile or a light line of banter. It's a bit of a game, this sort of selling.

I become smitten with a big journal, the color of a girl's dress who I video taped at work - the one with the bright smile. He says it would be 550.

I spend a lot time at the stand, comparing covers and deciding which one to get. There's a sort of reasoning that is like viscous vapor; one that follows the wandering mind. It says ' this would be good for ..... " or ' how about this because .... " And each time I look up or suggest a different price it's like the whole cardboard box of extra game pieces slides around and through a trick door and out into another.

What lies in the almost? In the in between places of potential?

I stay longer at this stand because for the time being its my pursuit, my life's purpose. And also because the vendor humors my Hindi. Or at least is content in thinking I understanding what he's saying all of the time. I sort of do. Hand gestures make up a lot of communication.


I get a price that I think I'm happy with, and a smattering of paper products that I think make sense. Either way, as I determined sitting sweaty in the breezy pagoda before following the woman, it's more about intention than acquisition. Why I went to buy a shoddy little snake. Why I want to buy the handmade over the leather-bound. Why I want nothing to do with beautiful artifacts that lack a story. But, I suppose if we want something enough, that becomes a story of itself..