I decided that I was going to bring Cherise back some kind of black pearl jewellery as a gift from India. Hyderabad is something of a world center in pearl commerce: around 90% of the world’s pearls pass through Hyderabad at some point. You might find this odd for a city that’s nowhere near the ocean, and you’d be correct. It’s pretty damn weird. From what I understand, it has little to do with geography and more to do with historically cheap pearl processing labour. That’s right. Hundreds of years ago, pearl processing was outsourced to India.

So Hyderabad became the the world’s place to buy pearls. If you happen to be in Hyderabad, the Laad Bazaar is the place to haggle for them. It’s a large shopping area in historic Charminar, the area’s ‘Old City’.

Having a girlfriend, I have some minuscule amount of solo jewellery purchasing experience. When you want to surprise her with jewellery, you can’t exactly bring her along, but pearls were something I’d never done before. I usually keep it simple- either gold or silver. No diamonds (I’ve been anti-DeBeers since well before Blood Diamond, thank you), and really no gems at all. They’re shiny, pretty, and extremely confusing. Rubies? Sapphire? Just what the hell is Moonstone? Just give me some of what they keep at Fort Knox. If the US has a whole division around it, it’s gotta be pretty valuable.

However, Cherise really likes pearls, and I happened to be in pearl capitol. Pearls it had to be, and it came with a host of new challenges. I had to check the luster and general feel of the pearls to gauge their quality. Looking specifically for black pearls only compounded these difficulties, as there are many fake black pearls which are merely dyed rather than cultured. After doing some research, I found that in general, the best way of testing the ‘authenticity’ of a black pearl was to gently rub it against your teeth. A dyed pearl would be extremely smooth from the layer of dye surrounding it, whereas an authentic black pearl would have a harsh, gritty texture.

At once, the question surfaced: what’s the polite way of asking a vendor if you can rub their expensive wares against the inside of your mouth? It also posed the problem that if it did indeed have that authentic grit, I was basically compelled to buy it. If there’s a ‘you break it, you buy it’ rule, I’m fairly certain that somewhere there’s a ‘if you get saliva on our jewellery, you really should buy it’ rule.

Perfume dealers in Laad Bazaar. I was almost tempted to take this as an easy way out.

Once at the bazaar, I was completely overwhelmed. There really were pearl dealers everywhere, basically as little shops crammed into tiny nooks and crannies in the streets. I stopped inside a couple of them, and was presented with various items when I asked to see the black pearls. It was then I realised that I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn’t bring myself to rub them against my teeth. I tried rubbing my fingernails gently over them, but that proved to be completely ineffective. At some point, one of the dealers handed me a knife. I assume it was to test the pearls. I still don’t know. Maybe it was an extremely passive threat.

Most of the dealers were honest people though. When I asked, they usually admitted that the pearls they had were dyed rather than cultured. It seemed like this could be a long search, so in the end, I caved. I left the bazaar and headed to a very official looking dealer.

Krishna Jewellery Mart was a pretty classy place. It felt a little weird to be walking in there with a floppy hemp Tilly hat. The stuff they had was very nice though, and we were served some excellent chai tea in small, delicate cups. I ended up buying Cherise a black pearl necklace with a little white gold clasp. Which, er, I don’t have a picture of. I’ll post it later.

Krishna Jewellery Mart. For the confused shopper’s black pearl needs.

I’ll wrap this entry up with one last shot from Laad Bazaar.

This photo was probably the first good ‘people shot’ I got while I was in India. I took it at Golconda Fort, a fairly popular domestic tourist attraction for Indians, with not quite so many foreigners present. We had been cruising around the place, and this young woman took a quick interest in my camera. She was separated from her group, so I asked if I could get her picture. She didn’t quite understand me, so I gestured with my camera and asked if it was ok. She hesitated, looked back at her group who weren’t paying much attention to her, and then smiled… and bobbed her head. I paused for a second. What the hell does that mean? And that was my first cultural gap experience in photography.

Of course, I knew what it meant. Kalyan explained to us that in India, while people nod and shake their heads (though I didn’t see much nodding), there’s a third option as well- the head bob. It’s kind of a smooth swaying of the head from side to side. In a way, it means ‘yes’, though in reality it isn’t quite that simple. It’s sort of a general affirmative, meaning anything from ‘yes’ to ‘yeah, I guess so’ to ‘I really am listening to you’. (You see people doing the bob all the time in general conversation while listening to each other. And yes, I’m completely aware that referring to it as ‘doing the bob’ makes it sound like a really unhip dance move.)

Being my second day in India though, I wasn’t totally used to it. After taking a second or so to process the gesture, I took the shot you see above. Afterwards, she all of a sudden became bashful. If this had happened in the States or any other Western country, I wouldn’t have thought much of it, but being in a completely different environment, I quickly began to wonder- had I made a mistake? Had I committed some sort of cultural transgression? Had I misread the bob?

I was about to find out that this sort of self-concious reaction to photography was pretty common in India.

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On several occasions, I got stopped by groups of guys who really wanted to get their picture taken with me, and I started to gather that there’s a certain coolness factor right now to being a Westerner in India. In the big Bollywood movies, you randomly see white people in the background. They don’t have speaking parts- rather, they’ll just be eating at a dinner table near the main characters in a restaurant scene, or obviously walking by as the main characters are taking a stroll. Judging by my popularity for random photos, I could probably seriously make a living as a Bollywood background extra. (Fortunately, these extras aren’t in the dancing scenes. I guess for all the hipness factor, Indians are realistic about whitey’s moves.)

I’d go along with random photo requests on the condition that I could get photographs of the people asking. I quickly learned that most men who get their photo taken, no matter how jolly and happy they were moments ago, will adopt a solemn macho pose for photographs. Women, on the other hand, remained fairly shy about photographs. Also, women weren’t asking for pictures with foreigners- it was exclusively a guy thing.

Those photos above by the way are taken in Hyderabad’s Laad Bazaar, an open air market that’s in the Old City portion of town. If you want to get your haggle on, this is the place to be. Unfortunately, I am a terrible haggler. A bit more on the market later.

Also, there is an exception to the photo self-conciousness rule. That’ll be the tease that’ll hopefully keep you coming back.