Tips on haggling in India No. 1

So I was in an "antiques" store selling very nice replicas of old Indian statues. I liked one that looked like those curvy sexy ladies from Khajuraho, kind of like this:


The shopkeeper told me this was very old, from the 14th Century and worth 35,000 rupees. That's about $1,000 Au. To put that in perspective, you can eat a decent meal for about $1.50 here.

So I told him that I didn't want to take away India's antiques and wasn't interested. He said that it was ok, it wasn't really an antique, it was a replica. So I told him that it couldn't be worth that much, and he dropped it down to 10,000 rupees, which is still a lot but at least not so ridiculous. Checkmate, sucker.

And no, I won't be buying ready-made stone antiques to be lugging around with me.