Said farewell to our hotel in Bhubaneswar and to the Jagannath gods and flew via Jetlite to Delhi. Arrived at hotel by 1:30. Took taxi to Connaught Place shopping complex and descended down a pedestrian stairway into something that looked like the 14th street arcade from hell. If this had been in New York I would never have entered. But Cathy is intrepid and with LOVE DELHI book in hand she quickly and miraculously found the shop she was looking for. The very small shop sold pretty cikan (pronounced chicken) embroidered cotton and silk shirts. We found lots of things to investigate.
What puzzles me about Indian shopkeepers is their inability to read interest. They will unfurl endless numbers of garments before you while you repeadly say "no" and then when you finally do express interest they unfurl another unwanted item. It must be a cultural thing. Anyway we did eventually bridge our communication gap while Cliff watched the latest David Pogue technology update on his iPhone. Next stop was a DVD/CD shop. I bought two sitar CDs, not Ravi Shankar.
Then we ventured out to the Regal Building to visit a khadi cloth store. Ghandi advocated India's return to homespun simple clothes and this store is devoted to selling all types of khadi cloth. I had though that khadi came only in off white, but this shop taught me a lesson. Cliff bought material for two shirts which he will have made at an elegant tailor around the corner.
