Delhi-cat-essen
In the morning we once again load out into cabs, this time to go shopping. Sonam directs our drivers to take us to the India equivalent of Frye’s Electronics. We emerge into the withering heat and glaring sunlight of Delhi to find ourselves in front of what could best be described as a scene from Mad Max: Modem Down. A wide enclosed courtyard, open to the sky, is lined with two square levels of small shops, all facing inward, with many small avenues opening into the further reaches of the interior of this open air “mall” for computer hardware. Like many structures we will see in India, it is not only apparently very new, it also looks quite ready for demolition. There is a large classical sort of statue in the center, trying to give the place an air of culture, but the paving stones all around are cracked with weeds. It is filled with the bustlings of men – all men – coming and going from shops, carrying or pulling or pushing loads of crazily stacked goods.
The shimmering of the air from the heat and humidity provides a deft touch of surrealism as Sonam guides us along the courtyard, up some stairs, and down a short, unlit corridor to one particular open doorway. It’s hard to see why he chooses this one, at first glance the others we’ve passed seem to have more or less the same products. It turns out he knows the proprietor and has done business with him before. Trust and loyalty are important elements of doing business here, as anywhere, but there are many legal failsafes of buying and selling goods in America that most people, especially a foreigner, have no recourse to in India. You trade with unknowns at risk.
The man, standing to greet us from behind his desk, welcomes us into his shop, which is a dark, square, windowless room, lined with shelves floor to ceiling like Sonam’s blues tape collection. They’re crammed to bursting with a completely disordered selection of, well, it’s hard to say exactly what, but it’s computer hardware. The man sends ‘his boy’ to get chairs and tea for his six prospective customers. Sonam had spoken with him earlier about our visit, so he knows there’s a reasonable bit of business to be conducted with us.
Sonam commences in English, the lingua franca of the room. I defer to Rick and Stefan for specs on the wiring equipment and computer hardware we’re picking up to construct a Web server from scratch. The laundry list emerges, the man takes his own notes, and the purchase begins to gain some traction. In a few instances, he does not seem to have what we need, so he sends his boy to get it from another shop nearby that does. The pricing calculus becomes complex.
After a while, Sonam and the proprietor switch to Hindi to engage in a little more direct haggling over the nature of and prices for given pieces of gear. After a good deal of that, Sonam needs to converse privately with me on what is going down, so he starts asking me questions in Tibetan. Meantime Jack, as our Windows jockey, has his own particular concerns, and it so happens we both know enough German, his picked up in the army, to consult auf Deutsch without tipping our hand to the shopkeeper, who is definitely going to make the best possible killing on this pack of foreigners that he can manage. All with a smile as we drink repeated rounds of this good merchant’s tea.
This increasingly elaborate babble is interrupted by a power failure that hits the entire complex. For four heartbeats we all sit in sudden silent darkness, dim daylight filtering in from the square down the hallway. Then, just as Rick has whipped out his maglite, and with a roar to compare with the armada Max sends forth to cross the desert, a fleet of diesel powered backup generators fire up in unison. The lights come up, and the quadrilingual negotiations recommence, now augmented by shouting above the din.
In the end, a total list of goods is summed up, and a price agreed upon. I am very glad we have Sonam here to conduct this deal. I have a fat wad of rupees in my pocket for the purpose, but it surely would have required at least double the amount if we had come in alone as green Americans. I carefully count it up twice for him, hand it over for the man to do the same, shake the man’s hand, and we all thank each other for a bit of business successfully conducted.
We emerge into the daylight laden with enormous coils of wires, more than five hundred yards of Thinnet coaxial, and our new cat5 ethernet cable supply in large cardboard boxes. I have taken into my own care the motherboard, CPU, RAM chips, and other parts required to build the Web server. We now have, we think, everything we need to build the network for the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. Let’s go up to the Himalayas.