The customer is not always right!

One thing that takes getting used to in India is that the "customer is not right". First time this happened I thought it was an anomaly. Gouri asked a tailor to make a dress for her with a modestly revealing neckline.

The tailor told her it was morally inappropriate, to which Gouri responded with characteristically-liberated-California-woman indignation that she is paying for the work so he should do what she asks. He nodded solemnly, but when Gouri got the dress back, the neck cut was 2 inches shorter than she asked for. At our new apartment, she asked a different tailor to make a dress from a design she found on an Internet site (yes, yes, that's how she spends most of her time...). She asked the guy to make a cut on the trousers from the ankle halfway up to the knee (not all the way up to the knee, mind you, just half way, thinking this time she would respect local prudishness). The tailor looked bewildered and said that this is not the done thing in India. Gouri said that the design was taken from an Indian website so how could it be inappropriate. The tailor said that those clothes were worn by movie stars and not normal women (I guess that means Gouri is not movie star material - shucks, I guess I was wrong). Eventually, though, after some discussion about how customers should be right, the tailor agreed to take the job. However, when Gouri got the pants back there was no cut at all - none whatsover!