The bargaining had stopped over one single rupee. The man said fifty and Ma said forty-nine and they went on for ten minutes after which Ma just walked out of the store. I was about thirteen years old and unhappy that we had just spent half an hour haggling over something she was not going to buy. I didn’t know that she was using another haggling tactic of walking out of the store and then being called in by the vendor who would then believe that she was serious about one rupee.

As I was dragged by the hand out of the shawl shop I cried out, “It is just one rupee, Ma, why do you have to be such a kanjoos?”

As soon as the word was out, I knew it was a mistake. Ma slapped me across the face in the center of the market and took me weeping and wailing back to our hotel.

She never forgave me for letting the entire marketplace know that she was haggling over one rupee or for the loss of the blue and black in-fashion and in-high-demand shawl. The vacation went to hell after that as Ma kept telling me how she was not a kanjoos, not a scrooge, and she was only trying to save money for our future, Nate’s and mine. When I reminded her that she was buying the shawl for herself, I was awarded another sound slap. I sulked for the rest of the vacation and for a couple of weeks even after we got back home to Hyderabad.

Thanks to happy memories like that I never, ever, bargained. It was a relief that in the United States I didn’t have to do it for groceries and clothes; everything came with a fixed price tag. And even when I went and bought my car, I didn’t barter or bargain. The nice Volkswagen dealer gave me the price; I agreed and signed on the dotted line even as Nick insisted that I was being conned.

“You could get it for two thousand dollars less, at least,” he told me when I was signing the loan papers.

“I like the car, I’m not going to fuss over it,” I told him firmly, and Accountant Nick’s eyes went snap-snap open in shock.