If I didn’t find any information in Chinna Bazaar St, I was supposed to visit the streets alongside the local Vishnu temple in search of doll sellers who may divulge the source of their wares. Here too I faced a different kind of atmosphere. The shop keepers were rather annoyed with me and one even told me to get the hell away. Why the hostility? I hadn’t even talked to anyone yet, I had just tried to take a picture of the street corner. This isn’t the first time I experienced such hatred for researchers/ reporters/ anyone with a camera. Even in Chennai last year, during Golu season, I was shoved around by a large female shopkeeper and an older man as they yelled at me, “oh you photo-takers, you come and sell pictures and our craft suffers. Because of you no one comes to us!” My intention was never to impose myself on these shopkeepers or influence their sales. If anything I hoped my research would create awareness for a dying craft. But their hesitancy and hurt implied to me a different sort of a concern. In a rapidly changing India, where the gap between the wealthy and poor (haves and have-nots) was glossy and visible, these sellers also felt a sense of economic hurt. They wanted a piece of the wealthy Indian pie, denied to them every day and yet flashed in front of their face.

Ethnography, as my professor Don told me, is ultimately about trust. Every time I visit a shop to start enquiring, I try to establish that trust. I tell them about myself and what I am studying but ultimately there will be some who just don’t want to talk to you.

Two of the three shops on this street, who sold the wooden dolls, didn’t want to talk to me and directed me to the one major shop at the very end of the street. There, I was told to return in the evening when the owner’s son would be there. When I returned in the evening I was able to meet the owner’s son but ultimately after a lot of questions he asked me, “Why should I tell you where the dolls are made?” At first I was dumb founded. I realized there was hurt in his voice when he asked me the question. Ethnography also presupposes that our informants will share information. IRB certified or not, I posed a threat to the economies of exchange involved in our conversation. I had tried to tell him that I was only a student writing about dolls. But his ambivalence came from an old fear, one of territoriality. Maybe he had heard of other doll shop owners losing their business to customers who went straight to the source. I realized very quickly that the wooden dolls were also deeply embedded in a socio-economic world of business and trade, where one person’s knowledge of the source, is still the sole capital upon which goods can be sold. If I were to understand these dolls and tell their whole story, I must also unravel the economic webs that have cocooned them over the years.

Eventually human nature prevailed and we were able to establish trust. He asked me to return when the doll makers would be visiting his shop later that week to drop off this week’s supply. I look forward to sharing more conversations with them and my new friend, the owner of this little artifact shop.