Lecture by Dr. Laura Brown. Roadsides in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, like other Indian cities, bloom with small grocery shops which offer their regular customers relatively high prices in return for the opportunity to buy goods on credit. Drawing on observations, interviews, and recordings of interactions in and around three such shops between the fall of 2005 and summer of 2008, I examine how customers and shopkeepers strive to negotiate potential conflicts in ways that preserve a sense of mutual obligation and trust. Commercial transactions are often presented as an emblematic case in which sharp delineation of roles and responsibilities should be preferred. However, in conversations about unpaid debts, shopkeepers and their customers frequently use and accept ambiguous estimations of debts and assignments of responsibility. I demonstrate how participants in shopping interactions comment on, and occasionally strategically deploy, possibilities for miscommunication and thereby ameliorate potential conflicts between the roles of 'thrifty buyer' and 'for-profit seller' and the competing claims to responsibility and knowledge that they entail.