And that was that. Nick told me that from now on, when I wanted a new car, I should tell him what I wanted and he would buy it. “Getting conned while buying tomatoes in India is one thing, but when you buy a car it’s criminal to not negotiate,” he said.

But to haggle equated being like my mother and I was never, ever, going to be like my mother.

The mango seller picked out two more mangoes and set them in front of Ma. “Try more. See, they are all the same,” he challenged eagerly, in an attempt to convince her.

Ma ignored the mangoes he chose and pulled out one at random from the basket in question. The man cut a slice off with his knife. Ma tasted the piece of mango and instead of swallowing it, spit it out in the general direction of the ground.

“Eight rupees,” she said, as she wiped her mouth with the edge of her dark blue cotton sari.

“Eight-fifty,” he countered.

“Eight,” she prodded and the man made a “since-you-twist-my-arm” face, giving in to her bargaining skills.

“Okay,” he sighed, then looked at me. “She drives a hard bargain, enh? I am not going to make any money on this sale.”

I made an “I-have-no-say-in-this” face and put the straw basket I was holding in front of him.

“How many kilos?” he asked, and I gasped when my mother said twenty.

How on earth were we, two women with no muscles to speak of, going to carry twenty kilos of mangoes all by ourselves?

I found out soon enough.

It was excruciating. Ma pulled the edge of her sari around her waist and heaved to lift one side of the basket, while I lifted the other. We looked like Laurel and Hardy, tilting the basket, almost losing the goods inside as we paraded down the narrow crowded aisles of Monda Market.

We reached the main road and set the basket down on the dusty pavement. My mother looked at me and shook her head in distaste. “We will have to go home and you will have to change before we go to Ammamma’s. I can’t take you looking like this and we have to take clothes for tomorrow anyway.”