We bought a toaster oven!!

I know this doesn't seem like a big deal because in the U.S. one can stop off at Target or Wal-Mart and easily buy a toaster oven. In India, buying a toaster oven is not as easy as it sounds. First, Tom had to locate the one store that sells toaster ovens. Then he had to go to the store to look at it and haggle over the price which was Rs 3200 the first time he went to look at it. He didn't buy it the first time he looked at it, but I think maybe he should have. He called them the other day and the price went up to Rs 3250.



Yesterday (Sunday the 25th) when we went out to go for dinner he decided to go by the store in the hopes that they would be open. We had to drive approximately 30 minutes from the apartment into the city (Chennai) to get to this place. Let me explain driving in India as I believe it is the same no matter where you are. I have seen this in Mumbai and Delhi when I was in India 2 years ago.

First, the roads are marked with lane lines. Second, no one and I mean NO ONE, stays in their lane. The roads are full of motorcycles, motorcycles, and more motorcycles. An entire family will be on 1 motorcycle: a child in front of the father who is driving the motorcycle, and sitting sidesaddle behind the father is the mother who is holding in her lap at least 1 smaller child and sometimes an infant along with the smaller child. None of these motorcycle people are wearing helmets.

In addition to the motorcycles there are buses, auto rickshaws, trucks, carts, bicycles, cars, and pedestrians. Everyone is driving 90 to nothing, continuously honking their horns, weaving in and out of the lanes, and cutting other drivers off. The buses are worth further mention as they are overflowing with bodies, people hanging out of the windows and hanging from the doors. The buses are so full that they actually lean to one side or the other.

There are stop lights but no one really pays attention to them. Even if the light is red, say going north-south at an intersection where there is an east-west road, the people going north-south just keep going and the people going east-west just floor it and cut in when they see an opening. The motorcycles will come alongside a car, then jump in front of the car and most of the time the motorcycles will go in between 2 cars. Several times during the drive I had to cover my eyes because I was just convinced that we were going to be in a wreck.

It is also confusing because just like in the UK, in India the roads are opposite from the U.S., and the drivers side of the car in India is the passenger side of the car in the U.S. Each time we have gone to get in the car I have gone to the drivers side thinking that it was the passenger side. It's very confusing!

So after all of this weaving and honking we finally make it to the street where the appliance store is located. This store is in an area with lots of different kinds of little shops on a very crowded street. I was the ONLY white person in the area and believe me when I say that a while female with an Indian male is an extreme curiousity. The stares are obvious but no one says anything. We had to park the car in an alley and walk maybe half a block to the store. There are people all over the street and trash everywhere, you have to pay attention to where you are walking so that you don't step in something gross. Did I mention the dust?

We went in the store and I can guarantee that not one person in the store had ever seen a white person in that store. They didn't even try to be subtle about staring, they just stared. They had several different sizes of toaster ovens and we had to look at each one. We finally decided on the middle-sized toaster oven and now the price is Rs 3300 (approximately $75 USD). Highway robbery!! The little dude had to take the toaster oven out of the box and show us all of the parts, the recipe book, and the user manual. Then he had to plug the toaster oven in to show that it worked. It worked.

Once the toaster oven was proven operational and the haggling over the price was complete, we had to move to the payment counter. There was a woman in front of us who was paying for whatever she had bought but she was spending more time staring at me than she was paying for her purchase. Finally she was finished and it was our turn. The cashier guy ran Tom's bankcard through the machine and Tom immediately got an email on his phone that the purchase was authorized. The cashier guy couldn't seem to get proof that the purchase was authorized from his little machine so he had to call the Big Boss Man over and he had to complete the transaction.

After we got the receipt that we had paid, we had to take it back over to the guy who originally helped us and he walked us out to the front door of the shop where another man had to verify our receipt and stamp it before we were allowed to leave with the toaster oven. So back down the street, to the alley, to the car with our very valuable toaster oven.

I never in my life thought that I would be so excited over a toaster oven but you have to understand this: in India, you have a gas range that basically sits on the counter, it is not built-in, and NO OVEN OF ANY KIND. People just don't bake here which is one reason why a toaster oven is so hard to find.

So now I can heat up stuff in the toaster oven and not have to rely totally on the microwave. This was a very exciting thing for me so don't laugh, I think most people would feel the same way in my situation.