A pre-Dhanteras evening at Meena Bazaar

Families buying gold at a store in Rolla, Sharjah for the upcoming Diwali. - Photo by M. Sajjad

Let's go check out gold! It was an impromptu plan. We didn't even know if gold was up or down or hanging on sideways. Neither my two colleagues nor I thought that by dinner time on Monday - the day Dhanteras - we'd be brandishing new gold trinkets. a bangle here, a chain there.
Shouldn't we be buying stuff Dhanteras, one colleague asked in the cab. We were headed for Cosmos Lane, Meena Bazaar, Bur Dubai i.e. Gold Central. A trip to the actual Gold Souk would have taken more -more effort, a longer trek, longer queues. Who can deal with all that? Divine forces wouldn't grudge us for smart planning, I told my colleague. Anyway, 'it was already tomorrow in Australia' (a mish-mash of the Charles M. Schulz quote).
The idea of Dhanteras is to buy metal. Any metal, in any token quantity: a spoon, a set of spoons, a (utensil) or knickknacks from the jewellery stores. It's an occasion to buy something for the house but self-splurging is permissible too.
Since it would have been a mad rush on Dhanteras, we cut corners and did the recce and buying the day before. PNG Jewellers, Damas, Joyalukkas, Kalyan, Malabar, the window display of Kanz and a couple more. We walked the stretch, entered half a dozen shops, lingered, sought assistance, tried on metals and sought feedback from each other while gaping at mirrors. All this on empty stomachs, till 10pm.
Different touts asked us about 18 times if we wanted firecrackers. Inside the stores, uniform-wearing salesmen tapped away at their calculators, whittled down 'making charges', and spouted their 'best price'. We took photos of the chits of paper that had the math, the deductions. One store guy pleaded with me to go to the RAK bank ATM and withdraw x amount. I groaned. Then obliged, then saw 10 people in queue and went back saying sorry, won't happen. The empathy lapse would have to be overlooked. Jewellers paying service charge to the bank is not the customer's headache. We just wanted to get out fast and go eat.
nivriti@khaleejtimes.com

• UAE
• Dubai

Nivriti Butalia

nivriti@khaleejtimes.com