Everything moves at glacial speed here. Except for Rafik the carpenter. His predecessor Vaseem took four months to make the wooden room that he’d assured me would take a week. It was frustrating, annoying and alarming. Frustrating because future plans hinged on it. Annoying because I couldn’t move forward with those plans. Alarming because I had paid him the hefty advance he had asked for.
Every evening I would chew the inside of my cheeks ( I don’t do fingernails) going over my reasoning for the advance. Vaseem is a small businessman, skilled but without a reserve of funds. He needed an advance to buy materials. But did he buy materials? Should I have given him exactly what he asked for? Indian culture demands that one bargain, beat people down, they’re always asking for more than what they expect to get. My friend, the bossy one, had taken me aside while listening to me talking to Rafik, the hero. She instructed me to knock down the price and not give him what he asked for. I explained that I didn’t believe in exploiting him.
Well, I didn’t believe in taking advantage of Vaseem either. The price he’d quoted was astonishingly low. I’d hid my surprise and made a few perfunctory attempts at playing the game of haggling, but left it pretty soon.
Vaseem doesn’t always work out budget-friendly. His quote for painting the fungus speckled walls had me gasping for breath. In horror. He clearly didn’t know what he was talking about since he’s a carpenter, and was hoping to break into the world of ‘contractors’ by painting my walls. He had no idea what to quote and his guess was ghastly.
He did me a favour though. Painting walls isn’t hard. I need a roller, some brushes, environmentally friendly paint, sandpaper and a long ladder. I have the ladder. If I DIY I can have fun, save time and a whole lot of money. Getting the house painted by painters is the biggest scam. They take over your house. Shift all the furniture around and never put it back. Festoon the place with plastic to protect floors and furniture on which you will later find splashes of paint despite the plastic curtains. Never clean the paint they have liberally splashed around. Never finish on time but go three or four times over the promised deadline. I think they drag out a job till they have another one. Charge huge commissions on the material. Never buy the material you want. I think they have a tie-up (a polite euphemism for ‘they are bribed by’) with specific paint companies. And charge you a huge chunk of your life’s savings, believing you have no idea how simple it is to paint a room.
I’ve done it. Slapped with an estimate that left me gasping I have painted the sprawling family home with one painter. I provided him with the material, a ladder, a helper and his daily rate. No haggling. He finished every enormous room in one day each. I know it can be done.
But my belief in my DIY abilities doesn’t extend to carpentry. Vaseem was reasonable. But a glacier. In August, after I’d sent him the advance I waited with bated breath for the arrival of the wood with which he was to build the wooden room. At first, I believed the promises he made. He had gone down to the plains to buy the wood. The wood would arrive after a few days. Anytime I was on the road behind a pickup carrying wood I presumed it was mine. If I heard a truck passing by on the main road I presumed it was mine. It never was.
Photo by Abby Anaday on Unsplash
Then it began to rain in earnest. Vaseeem’s promises extended to finding a covered truck to transport the wood. From there he promised that the wood had arrived in his godown. In the hills, everyone knows what everyone else is doing. I sent sleuths to check the wood in his godown. There was none. It became easier to catch out the half-truths. He amended his story to, the wood was in his godown in the plains.
We had what is called a very good monsoon. It poured. It streamed. The Himalayas, always fragile, made more so by unchecked building responded with landslides. A bridge collapsed. The road to my remote spot in the hills became inaccessible to trucks. They weren’t allowed on the one remaining bridge.
Finally one day all the stars aligned and wood arrived. Vaseem turned up with a sweet smile and two carpenters. There were two frenzied days of hammering and sawing. Then there was no more wood. We had run out of wood. Why, I asked, why didn’t you transport all the wood at the same time and save yourself the cartage. He had some response that made so little sense I’ve even forgotten what it was. Work came to a grinding halt.