21. Full Power, Twenty-Four Hours

Fig 21-1: Sunrise over the Ganges

Part of the fun of going to any given place in India that large groups of people go to is fending off the armies of children that are dispersed throughout the crowd in order to sell you things. These children offer products ranging from postcards to hot glasses of chai, while still others wander the crowd searching for handouts of coins or writing utensils (school pens!). Kids often seem to be the chosen method for marketing these products, most likely on account of their undeniable cuteness and the low-to-nonexistent cost of their labor, and although the work seems to make these kids pretty cynical, in the end, they are just children, and this has the charming side effect of a sort of playfulness in the tired old sales transaction.

None of this changes the fact that I usually won’t buy anything from people who employ almost expressly annoying marketing techniques (such as begging and pleading), although certain kids make these interactions funny, at the least, when they become exasperated, and the sale is slipping away from them.

One of our funniest dealings with the child aged sales force came a few months ago in Goa (see N^o 06. The New Slang), when a kid sitting in a shop stall blurted “I am Full Power!” out at me as I passed by him yet another time without buying anything. At the time, I had no idea where such an ingenious phrase could have come from, though last week, as we sat watching the nightly puja on the banks of the Ganges in Varanasai, one of the little salesmen (who was trying to sell us votive candles to float in the river) got frustrated and inadvertently completed the mysterious phrase when out of desperation, he muttered “Full Power, twenty-four hours, no toilet, no shower.”


Fig 21-2: One Person's Puja is Another Person's Marketing Opportunity

It’s nice to think that these children might all have a common language when it comes to expressing their frustration with the stinginess of the tourist population, although I’m sure that this saying is born out of a tourism-industry-wide sentiment rather than some sort of 12 and under collective consciousness. Ultimately, I think that this particular kid thought that he was saying something rude to us, though if his aim was to offend, then he picked the wrong group of tourists: all we did was start laughing and beg him repeat himself, to which he obliged us--although unlike the puja happening behind him, watching this actually cost a few Rupees.


Fig 21-3: Adult Swim