Rupee Millionaires

by Frank Kusy

  It wasn’t through ill-will or incompetence that they produced badly fitting clothes, Madge chided me. It was just that they were making stuff they simply didn’t wear.

  ‘Take Satish for instance,’ she said. ‘It’s taken you years to train him up to make western-style hippy dresses and skirts. Up until he met you, all he knew how to make were Rajasthani kurtas, saree-suits, and woollen ponchos. He must have ditched hundreds of samples before he got it right, so you’ve got to admire his stamina!’

  This was the one thing that bothered me about Madge in India. Even after she knew it was just a game, that I only savaged traders who totally deserved it, then laughingly forgave them, she kept leaping to the defence of people like Satish, who had, as it happened, just got something wrong again.

  ‘It wasn’t his fault,’ she complained stubbornly. ‘He did his best, so it must have been down to you. You couldn’t have explained it to him properly!’

  I knew better than to disagree. If I knew one thing by now, it was that Madge had a simple, almost naïve sympathy for anyone for whom she felt sorry, and when it came to ‘poor’ Indians she would defend them to the death. It didn’t matter how badly or how often they screwed things up. In her opinion—and it was a maddening opinion that made me want to bang her head against the wall—“You must treat these people with respect, not like ex-Raj colonial subjects!”

  Chapter 30

  Mister Duplicator

  I knew I was sick when I lost it in the market.

  There was an irritating band of oily characters on the fringes of Pushkar society who made it their job to hassle travellers. ‘Remember me?’ they’d croon, and before one had time to say no, they would follow up with the demand ‘Where is my gift?’

  This particular day, it got too much. One guy sidled up to say ‘Forget me?’ and I just snapped.

  ‘Forget you?’ I snarled. ‘I’d love to forget you. Just tell me how! If I could forget you, I would die a happy man!’

  Madge swiftly guided me back to the hotel and put me to bed. I wasn’t safe on the streets, she decided, and neither was anyone else.

  It was not I who ended up in hospital, however, but Madge. Minutes after taking my temperature and finding it to be a ripe 104, she discovered a horsefly inside her mosquito net and broke her little toe while trying to stomp it against the wall.

  I watched in semi-delirium as a white VW van drew up—Pushkar’s answer to an emergency ambulance—and carried Madge away. An hour passed, then another. Satish turned up with some fabric samples which I listlessly checked. A couple more hours went by, with my slipping in and out of consciousness, before the door to our room burst open and Madge hopped toward me on one foot, looking totally outraged.

  ‘You won’t believe this,’ she spluttered, ‘but I’ve just been abducted! I was the only passenger in that van, and the driver was mad—quite mad. He didn’t speak a word of English, and he kept frightening people off the road with his stupid siren. He drove me out to the middle of the desert and set me down at this gigantic airline hanger which turned out to be a ‘hospital.’ I was left for hours in a dark concrete bunker with no chairs and lots of sick people moaning on the floor until someone finally appeared with a wheelchair. I was cranked into a vast hall occupied by one x-ray machine, and I only stopped screaming when I saw the word Siemens on it. That’s when I realised they were only going to scan me, not torture me. Turns out I hadn’t broken the toe, thank God, just sprained it, but I tell you one thing. You don’t want to fall ill in India, no way!’

  Three days later, with both of us more or less recovered, we were on our way back to Delhi in the Maruti van. If all went well, Madge would soon board a plane back to England carrying a bagful of Bobby’s silver, and I would fly on to Bangkok for a quick three-day jewellery buy. We were in an optimistic mood.

  Halfway to Jaipur, Madge leant towards Sanjay Ajarwal, who was sitting up front with the driver. ‘What shall we bring you next time as a present?’ she asked. ‘A T-shirt with “I Love London” on it?’

  Well, Sanjay positively sneered at this suggestion. His idea of a present was nothing less than a zoom-lens Kodak camera or a state-of-the-art Gameboy with lots of buttons. He didn’t say as much, but the sneer, coupled with the phrase ‘Bring what you like,’ told us exactly what he thought of the T-shirt idea. He then informed us he could make anything that Gordhan manufactured, and for half the price—though he said he was not out to ruin Gordhan. He did have his scruples.

  ‘Why you not make me Gordhan-style dungarees?’ I asked. ‘I give you sample one year before. You lose it?’

  ‘I no lose,’ declared Sanjay confidently. ‘I am Mister Duplicator. I copy everything quick and easy. But Gordhan no happy I make dungarees, so I no make. He has little business, so he is happy. I take his business, he is crying. He is Agarwal, he is relation, so no good I make him unhappy.’

  Speaking of Gordhan, we dropped in on him in Jaipur. He was as jolly as ever and just as incoherent. I got a great photo of him, again explaining the intricacies of black-market quotas to Madge. His face was screwed up with agitation, his brow furrowed in an expression of pain while Madge stared back at him, wearing a forced smile of polite interest. As before, she didn’t have the faintest idea of what he was talking about.

  Back on the road, we found out what Sanjay did want as a ‘present.’ He wanted to come to England and buy a fridge. Ever since the January before, when the Indian government had floated the rupee against other international currencies, the black market in foreign exchange had vanished. Indians could now travel to England and the States with as much foreign currency as they liked. They didn’t need to buy it ‘on the black’ anymore, and were thus making frequent trips abroad to kit their homes out with the latest hi-tech domestic appliances—including fridges. The rupee had now devalued to 65 to £1—a 20 per cent decrease—but that didn’t put them off in the slightest. In India, you were what you owned, and they were prepared to pay for it.

  ‘Despite this,’ said Sanjay, ‘money is very tight in India.’

  He didn’t know why, but he had noticed that very few buyers were coming to India. Of the twenty-seven foreign wholesalers who had crowded out the Venus restaurant just three years before, the only survivors—according to Sanjay—were me and American George. Pushkar had had its day in the sun, a brief decade of glory, and now it was almost over. The recent recession had a lot to do with it, I theorised, though it was probably just as much to do with people like Ivan and Spud, who had sold tons of damaged silk to shops and spoilt it for everyone.

  The Maruti screeched to a halt around 7pm, just as Bobby’s shop in Paharganj was closing. Somehow my thirty kilos of replacement jewellery had made a showing, and we managed to cram it into Madge’s already jam-packed luggage. We then raced to the airport by taxi, and I ushered Madge onto the plane. Problem over, I thought.

  Of course not. It was just beginning.

  A casual glance at my own ticket sent sweat immediately to my brow. It wasn’t my ticket at all. My name was now Madge, and I was going to London. This meant Madge was now me, and she was on her way to Bangkok. Somehow, in all the rush, the tickets had got mixed up. My only recourse was to dash up the tarmac to her plane—its turbines already gunning and ready for take-off—and rummage through her handbag while the other astonished passengers watched me exchange the tickets and dash back off again. Madge was completely unaware. She was in the toilet and missed the whole thing.

  Throughout this feverish activity, one question burned in my brain: how on earth had she been allowed on the wrong plane in the first place?

  It was an ominous start to an ill-fated side trip.

  Chapter 31

  Thai-Tracked

  ‘What is this?’ demanded Mr Missal, pulling handfuls of silver jewellery out of Madge’s luggage. ‘Why you no declare this?’

  Madge had arrived at Heathrow airport after a long night flight from Delhi and wandered into the ‘goods to declare’ channel with only on
e thought in mind: ‘Will I be in time for my first morning class?’ The fact that she might have a problem with Bobby’s silver hadn’t occurred to her. It hadn’t occurred to me, either. As far as I was concerned, it was a straight swap of good for bad goods, and I had already paid duty on the bad stuff, so why should I pay it again?

  Mr Missal was the duty customs officer at red channel that day, and he couldn’t believe his luck. Here was an obvious criminal trying to smuggle goods past his nose with not even a receipt to justify their presence.

  Tony, my import agent, looked at Madge in bewilderment as if to say, ‘What have you done? How can I possibly help you?

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Madge muttered wearily. ‘My husband told me to bring it through, and he said it was okay.’

  ‘Oh,’ sniffed Mr Missal, ‘and I suppose if he told you to bring through thirty kilos of drugs, that would be okay, too?’

  At this point, Madge’s earlier stoicism, the result of twenty hours of no sleep, gave way to outraged indignation. ‘Look here, you self-important little man!’ she snarled. ‘Are you trying to imply I’m an international drugs smuggler?’

  Mr Missal wasn’t used to being talked at this way. He was a small, arrogant Indian, used to meek pleading and profuse apology from ‘criminals’ he had caught. He was supposed to humiliate them, not them him. Without a further word, he frog-marched Madge into a dark interrogation cell with a chair chained to a table, and shone a bright beam in her face for further questioning. Madge was not pleased. Instead of breaking down and crying, as he expected her to do, she went cold and hostile on him, winding Mr Missal up even further and guaranteeing her an extended stay in that manacled chair.

  ‘How many times have I got to say it?’ she shouted at last. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. I am not a criminal, and I’ve got thirty students waiting for me in a classroom. If you don’t let me out of here right now, I am going to scream!’

  Mr Missal briefly considered chaining her to the wall for his own protection, then thought better of it. Here was a kind of criminal he had not come across before: a totally unrepentant and volatile one, and he took two steps back before issuing his next and last volley.

  ‘Why are you so upset?’ he demanded. ‘What do you have to hide?’

  I wouldn’t have wanted to be there to see the flash in Madge’s eyes. I’ve seen it before. ‘Don’t raise your voice to me,’ Madge advised imperiously, ‘or I’m going to file a complaint about you bullying people! I want to see your superior right now!’

  With that she made a vicious lunge for him, forcing him to scuttle out of the cell and double-lock the door behind him.

  Half an hour later, his ‘superior’ arrived. He was a tall, avuncular figure with much better people skills, and he managed to calm Madge down. After just a few short questions, he decided she was innocent and let her go. But although she did make her class (just about), she had not forgotten my part in all this. I had nearly cost her her job, she reasoned. She had been rudely (and unfairly) abused by a jumped-up little official and had nearly acquired a criminal record. And she was not going to forgive me that for a very long time.

  Neither was Mr Missal. His dignity had been seriously affronted by his encounter with Madge, and he was in the mood for revenge. He may have been forced to let one criminal go, but there was still one left in the bag. He had all my flight details, and he had all my silver. And he waited, oh so patiently, for me to fly in from Bangkok and lay claim to it.

  Blissfully unaware of all the high drama going on back home, I proceeded into Thailand to buy yet more silver, thereby compounding my problems tenfold. Little did I know it, but I was about to make Mr Missal’s day—perhaps his year.

  *

  I had been to Bangkok many times before, researching my guidebooks on Thailand and Southeast Asia, but I’d never been there for business. Spud had been there on his own back in ’93, but that had been a disaster. He had hit Chinese New Year, not just in Thailand but in Vietnam as well, and all the shops had been closed for a week.

  It was now 27th January, and if my calculations were correct, I had three days to get all my buying done before the same thing happened to me. In my haste, however, I made a fundamental mistake. Instead of resting up in a hotel, as any sensible person would have done, I shrugged off jet-lag and went on a manic shopping spree straight off the plane. Ten hours later, and clutching two big bags of silver in my hands, I fell asleep in the back of a taxi … and woke up in Cambodia.

  The first I knew of this was the driver announcing, ‘Hotel, boss!’ followed by a posse of Cambodian border officials asking for my passport. The cabbie hadn’t understood my slurred instructions, and instead of taking me to the Amari Boulevard, my hotel of choice, he had driven me all the way up Sukhumvit Road—the longest road in Asia—to a completely different Amari in a completely different country. Before the curious Cambodians got wind of the twenty kilos of brand new silver in the boot, I grabbed the wheel, made the driver turn round, and sent us spinning four hours back to Bangkok. It was a close call.

  The trouble with shopping in Bangkok, and the reason I had been unable to stop, was that the Thai silver was so good. Not only was the quality much finer than in India, since it was machine made, but it was also well tuned into the current fashions in world jewellery. Bangkok was the copy capital of Asia, and amongst other things it was now turning out the latest trend in ultra-violet and body jewellery, which was all the rage in the West.

  Bangkok was also, in my opinion, the Las Vegas of the western wholesaler: a whole new game with lots more chips with which to play. Though for every buyer who bet well and made money, I guessed, there would surely be others who bought too much of the wrong thing, and at the wrong time, to ever be able to afford to come back again. Not only were the stakes much higher, but the practiced, painted smile of the Thai trader—so much like a Vegas Baccarat croupier—tempted one to play on and on until, quite suddenly, it was Game Over.

  I didn’t want to use my credit card, but somehow it just kept popping up. The English pound was so strong and the silver so cheap, that I had to mentally slap myself every so often to stop going overboard. I had begun following Argentinians and Italians around silver shops since they seemed to have the best idea of what was ‘in’ and fashionable. What they bought in tens, I bought in hundreds. The buying buzz was truly upon me, and by the end of my second day I was still awake at 4am, ploughing through my treasure and trying to price it all up.

  It wasn’t just a matter of making money. To me it was more to do with finding something new and exciting to show my customers back home, the anticipation of saying, “There you go. Check this out!” There was nothing in my mind like showing a whole load of new lines to jaded customers who had got in the habit of rolling their eyes and asking, “Same old shit again?” At the same time, however, I knew I had to put a brake on my spending soon. I had gone through £14,000 already, and it would take me months to claw it all back.

  Maybe it was the novelty, but I found Thailand surprisingly easy to deal with after India. The smog of diesel hanging over Bangkok was even worse than in Delhi—so dense indeed that saffron-robed monks emerged from it coughing into their begging bowls—but the city was otherwise quite tourist-friendly.

  The shops were easy too, relaxed and honest. And unlike India, they could attend to me without a constant series of interruptions from telephone calls, sadhus passing by for alms, vagrant cows nibbling at clothing, and unhygienic Pepsi bottles being handed over. Most Thai shops, I was even more surprised to find, were pleasantly air-conditioned and all the jewellery was stacked in transparent little boxes. Each one was labelled and coded so the buyer could see at a glance what was available and what wasn’t. One final bonus: there was no end to the shopping experience. The Thais lived even more on the job than the Indians, kicking off work around 10am and closing as late as midnight.

  After the last day’s shopping in Ko-Sahn, however, I was back in my room
considering a problem.

  I had too much luggage. I’d stupidly brought twenty-five kilos of Pema goods in from Delhi, and now I had mountains of silver to pile on top. At this point I realised how mad I had been to do India and Thailand together. The luggage from even one of these countries was enough to give me trouble at airport check-in, let alone two.

  In my head, alarm bells began ringing. Even the most careful packing left me with two thirty kilo suitcases—one for the main hold of the plane, one for hand-carry—plus a fifteen kilo shoulder bag, which I hoped nobody would notice. The sheer scale of my over shopping became apparent when the bellboy came to collect my bags. He bent down to pick them up … and his arms remained rooted to the floor.

  ‘Wow!’ he muttered respectfully and rang for a trolley.

  The two big bags actually weighed in at thirty-five kilos each. I found this out at Don Muang airport, where—totally against expectations—all my luggage was checked through with a big smile.

  ‘Today is lucky day!’ the ground hostess informed me. ‘Chinese New Year, so empty flight!’

  It was so empty I was offered a triple row of seats in which to sleep during the twelve hour flight to London.

  But that was as far as my luck went. I wandered off the plane at Heathrow, feeling pleased with myself, and strolled straight into the arms of Mr Missal.

  ‘Ah, Mr Kusy,’ purred Madge’s old adversary. ‘There you are!’

  I glanced around the customs hall and determined I was the only person present—except for Tony, my agent, who squirmed uncomfortably in a corner. Tony knew what was coming, and one look at his terrified eyes spoke volumes. I was in deep, deep trouble.

  Mr Missal didn’t bother asking if I had anything to declare. He just ushered me into the interrogation cell, the same one Madge in which had languished, then he left me in the manacled chair to consider my fate. When he returned, a long hour later, his face was creased in a triumphant smirk, and his thick brush moustache simply twitched with excitement.