All last year, our TV sat on top of a cute little Tibetan cabinet I bought in China. The cords and cables intertwined with those of the stereo system and DVD player to form a spaghetti-esque jumble on a school-provided coffee table stashed behind the cabinet. Every time I entered the living room, the cord jumble caught my eye and made me cringe, but wall sconces and our massive Chinese day bed limited our ability to rearrange the furniture. Sliding all over the New Delhi learning curve, I couldn’t cope with shopping for a TV cabinet. When we returned to India in August – no longer the “newbies” and equipped with our own car and driver – I felt ready to take on the challenge. Or so I thought. As it turned out, finding a cabinet was the easy part.
My friend Sandra wanted to visit Gujarat Haveli, a furniture showroom on the outskirts of town. With her husband, Dan, and our new counselor, Holli, we browsed through disorganized acres of random furnishings salvaged from homes, temples, palaces and other buildings mostly in the western state of Gujarat. It took a good eye to spot treasures in the dank cavernous storage areas.
Intricately carved wooden arches leaned against large trunks adorned with stamped-tin peacocks and secured with heavy metal locks. Thick with dust, broken chairs, benches, wide shallow bowls, and splintered distressed boards with protruding nails towered toward the flickering florescent lights. One room featured a lacy wooden screen about 15 feet high and 40 feet long. Narrow paths wove between stacked dressers, cabinets, bookshelves, headboards, mirrors, desks, and random carved figures, some small enough to sit on a shelf and some taller than me. I kept giggling in the spirit of discovery. Occasionally I would stop walking, stand in place, peruse my immediate vicinity and try to process every item in sight, but it was impossible. Looking at my photos, I spot objects I missed in person.
I became a little obsessed with this piece, which must have been a door frame. It’s huge. It would take up most of a wall in our apartment. It would be an irrational purchase, but I keep dreaming of it all cleaned up and polished.
Outdoors, exposed to the monsoon rains, beautiful doors, lintels and other carved woodwork leaned against the buildings.
A mountain of scrap metal teetering outside one warehouse had – upon closer inspection – lovely wrought-iron artwork with curlicue designs peeking out from rusted wire and brass pots.
Dan named this basin of water “the dengue pot.” After battling dengue fever last year, he has legitimate reasons to fear standing water and mosquito breeding grounds.
The big head sitting among other knick-knacks amused me.
Here are some more photos.
Fortunately, some of the warehouse space showcased finished furnishings, slightly more organized and somewhat easier to scrutinize. In addition to the restored antiques, the company sells new pieces – some built from scratch, some using old wood.
In one of those rooms, I found exactly what I needed! The company’s owner said the front and sides of the cabinet were built from old hardwood, but the back is new. It’s hard to know what to believe. All I know is I like it.
By the end of our visit, we had all purchased some large pieces, so we arranged for delivery the next day. That’s where this story takes a turn for the worse.
On Sunday, Aug. 12, the day after our shopping excursion, I looked out the window of our second-story apartment to see a truck and half a dozen scrawny delivery men. Tony ran downstairs to ensure our new cabinet could fit in the narrow stairwell. Otherwise, we could hoist it up to our balcony, which the moving company did with all our other large furniture. He came back upstairs and reported the cabinet was small enough to clear the ceiling and our doorway if it came up the stairs. The delivery men simply needed to carry it upright. Soon after making this determination, we heard a loud smashing sound, followed by another and another. Frozen in shock, we reacted slowly. By the time we got to the stairwell, the cream-colored walls were streaked with red from the battered corners of our new cabinet. The men had turned it sideways for the trip up the stairs. At the bend, they discovered the cabinet was too long to make the turn. They apparently believed the wall would somehow yield if they swung the cabinet around the corner hard enough.
Tony shouted, “Stop! Stop!” But before they could process his instructions, they gave the cabinet one more big heave, which smashed out the stairwell window. This was too much for me to handle with grace. While Tony turns angry in the face of excessive stress, I often start laughing hysterically. (Ask my dad to tell the story of his newly painted garage and my newly acquired driver’s license.) So I started to laugh and shriek. “They BROKE the freakin’ window!” I howled. Tony was bellowing and dropping f-bombs, but the delivery men didn’t seem to understand and continued their pillage up our stairs.
At the doorway to our foyer, they could have turned the cabinet upright and inched it into the living room. Instead, they kept it on its side and, like a battering ram, pounded it into the entrance wall repeatedly, gouging out chunks of plaster and molding, ripping the doorbell off its mounting, and breaking a foot off the cabinet. When one of the men handed Tony the foot, I thought my husband’s head would explode.
I stopped laughing and quickly dialed Jagdish, the owner of Gujarat Haveli. As I explained the situation, Tony hollered in the background, “It’s like a car full of clowns tried to carry our cabinet up the stairs!”
Jagdish agreed to come immediately to see the damage. Tony admonished the delivery men and told them not to go anywhere until Jagdish arrived, but they made a break for it when we weren’t paying attention. When Jagdish got to our home, I started laughing again. Honestly, I didn’t even know what to say. Tony and I pointed out the damage in our stairwell and in our foyer. We showed him the broken cabinet. He shook his head and looked dismayed. He expressed frustration with his employees. He offered to fix the window and instructed a workman to reattach the cabinet’s broken foot, but otherwise he made no attempt to compensate us.
We had expected him to gush with apologies and perhaps even offer a token gift from his showroom or a discount on our cabinet. That didn’t happen. Jagdish kept asking, “Madam, what do you want? What would make you happy?” I honestly didn’t know. We still owed him about half the cost of the cabinet, but we weren’t ready to hand over the cash. We told him we needed to think about it. On his way out the door, he turned back and said, “You know, such things happen. You could be out driving your car and someone hits you.”
“Yes, and then they would have to pay for it,” I said, overenunciating “pay.”
“Not in India!” he responded. And off he went.
Stunned, Tony and I sat silently for a few minutes. We discussed the situation and agreed that we would rather have our school’s maintenance department fix the window. Otherwise, we’d have no recourse if it were done badly. I called Jagdish and reminded him that he had asked what would make me happy. Here’s what I told him:
“I like your warehouse. You have beautiful pieces, and your prices are lower than other places in Delhi. I believe you are essentially an honest man with poorly trained delivery men. I want to recommend your company to my friends and colleagues at the American Embassy School. However, you have to understand we expect a certain level of customer service. We shouldn’t have to beg for it. If you or your employees cause any inconvenience to your customers, you need to immediately make some gesture to express your sincere apology and appreciation. I don’t want you to fix the window or paint my walls, but I do want you to make such a gesture.”
Unable to fathom my meaning, he kept asking for a specific request, so I insisted on a small reduction in the price of my purchase.
He tried to explain how that cabinet sells for a much higher price and he already gave me a steep discount, which led me to say once again, “They BROKE a freakin’ window.” We ultimately came to an agreement, and he turned his car around to come back for the rest of his money.
Despite the delivery drama, we do love our new cabinet.
