More fun at the Infiniti Mall

OK, I may have been a bit premature about the Karaoke guy yesterday. Today I went back to the good ole Infiniti Mall after work, to get a little dinner, and the evening circus extravaganzic activities were in full swing. The Karaoke guy had moved to the stage set up on the ground floor, and there was some kind of contest going on, and they were indeed charging 100 rupees to register. There were supposed to be prizes for winners, but they were a little vague about that, something about coupons. I still didn't want to pay to sing, tempted though I was, because of the stage set up, but I thought I'd have a little fun, so I said to the guys "You want me to pay you ? YOU should pay ME to sing! When SRK does a movie, does he have to pay to be in the movie, or does he get paid to do it? When Sachin plays cricket, does he have to pay to play, or do they pay him to play cricket? So I shouldn't have to pay to sing, you should be paying me to sing!". They all took it in the playful way in which I intended it, and we all laughed about it.

Anyway, it just goes to show that misunderstandings can happen frequently here, even if I'm speaking a little Hindi or Marathi and they're speaking a little English. In the vast majority of cases, no one is really trying to cheat anyone.

Then I went to the display where they were giving samples of a skin lotion for women, which had some skin-whitening properties. I think this one was just cosmetic, a white cream that didn't totally disappear, not lemon juice or anything harsher, but still. I've written about this trend before, and tried to tell the woman working there that Indian woman are beautiful, why should they want to lighten their skin, but she wasn't really interested in getting into a philosophical discussion about it. But she blushed a little when I called all Indian women beautiful, and we laughed a bit too.

Then I got some pav bhaji for dinner and headed home for the night.