While shopping in Nature’s Basket after my German class today, I was pondering over corn chips, trying to find a vegan variety. I had already been approached by a young lady who was trying to get me to buy a brand of tea, but I had said I was not interested.
Suddenly, the man who was with her approached me with a pamphlet for the same tea. He had a new selling angle, it seems.
“Madam,” he started, “this tea we have for the slimming. For the big body sizes you can take. Within three months, madam, you will lose the body fats.” He concluded this spiel and looked at me expectantly.
Now, on several other occasions, while out and about, I – and I am sure any other fat person – have been singled out to learn the benefits of some product which will make me lose weight, guaranteed. Once, while shopping in another store, a stranger – another shopper - approached me and asked where I was from. I told her, and she asked me my name.
Wondering where this was going, I told her. Then she said, “I work for one company from your United States, we sell herbal remedies....” Before she could say more, I said, “You’re trying to sell me something to make me lose weight, isn’t it?” “Yes!” she answered, beaming happily at me. “You need it, na?”
It has become apparent that here, people who are too fat (and probably those who others deem too thin) are quickly cornered to receive the latest spiel on the latest remedy to help that person look “normal” and “be healthy”. I have had many a perfect stranger advise me on diet, exercise and medical conditions. In India, such things seem as normal as Americans might say, “How are you?”
Nature’s Basket is often frequented by foreigners, many of whom may seem large by Indian standards. I had a sudden vision of every large person being attacked by tea man. So I decided, let me explain some cultural differences. I told him, “I would like to share with you....when a person is fat, they usually do not want to be sold things which are supposed to be slim them....it can be rude to them.” He didn’t understand. He repeated the tea’s amazing slimming abilities and accompanied the spiel with gestures to indicate how thin I would surely become if I just tried the tea.
I said, “How about this masala tea here – also same company?”
“Yes madam,” he said. “By this company only. But madam, you need the slimming tea. That one you buy?”
I tried to explain to him again that pointing out that someone who is overweight needs to buy a specific thing to slim them can be rude to some people. He replied, “Yes madam, you need to lose the weight.”
By now the girl who had first tried to sell me tea came over, wanting to know what was wrong. I explained everything to her. She said, “Yes, yes – I got it.” She turned to the man and spoke to him in Kannada. He replied, “Within three months.”
It now became apparent that even in his local tongue, he could not understand how pointing out that someone was fat and needed slimming tea could be rude. The girl looked at me and shrugged.
The man happily thrust a sample packet of the slimming tea at me and with a smile said, “You will see madam, within three months, you will be not so fat.”
I succumbed, decided culture lessons could wait another day, took the tea and went to the checkout counter!
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