My Indian friends who visited India after living in the United States said: “Everything will look dirtier than it did before.” I never thought myself to be so Americanized that I would cringe from eating a piece of mango that had languished in that man’s basket where he had touched it with his hands and…

I shook my head when the man scratched his hair and used the same hand to find a piece of food between yellow teeth, while he waited for judgment to be passed on his mangoes.

Ma sighed elaborately and popped the piece of mango into her mouth. From her eyes I could see she was excited. From the myriad mangoes she had tasted all morning, this was the one that would be perfect for her pickle. But she was not going to let the mango seller know it. It was Haggling 101.

“They are okay,” she said with a total lack of enthusiasm.

“Okay, enh?” The man frowned and slapped his thigh with his hand in disapproval. “Amma, these are the best pachadi mangoes in all of Monda Market. And”-he paused and smiled at me-“I will give them to you for nine rupees a kilo, enh?”

Ma waved a hand negligently, and memories of my mother bartering over everything came rushing back like a tidal wave. The worst of all incidents was when we were on vacation in Kullu Manali in Himachal Pradesh. It was a popular vacation spot in the Himalayas before Kashmir had become such an issue with Pakistan. In a bazaar in Manali, Ma was trying to buy a shawl; it was not just any shawl, this was an in-fashion and in-high-demand woolen shawl, which had different colors on each side. This was a blue and black shawl and Ma was haggling like she had never haggled before.