This Incredible India

THIS INCREDIBLE INDIA Arriving at New Delhi airport, an advertisement warns us that we are entering “Incredible” India. “Incredible India” is the slogan printed on the jackets of local guides and in the tourist centres of the subcontinent. Indeed India is incredible, for the enormous ethnic and cultural variety of the people who live there, for its breathtaking landscapes at the foot of the Himalayas, for its white-sand beaches in the south, for the dreamlike monuments that make us imagine the luxurious life of the maharajas' time, for the kindness of its people; it is incredible for its very marked contrasts, for the stridency of music amplified by loudspeakers, for the scents of flowers and incense and the stench of organic waste scattered here and there. It is simply incredible.

But it is also incurably “incredible” for its habitual cheating, for its wealth of imagination in trying to rip off the tourist. The cases are many; sometimes crude and childish; sometimes more sophisticated. As travel organisers we consider it our responsibility to accompany the client, if not in person then at least by phone, to find out whether everything is going well. In this way we are told the whole repertoire of attempts of the kind “let's see if I can earn a bit more”. The list is long; here I illustrate only a few of the examples that struck us most. A few years ago a client returns to his hotel in Delhi and, after asking how he spent the day, answers me: “Fine, but in the underpass of Palika Bazar a boy comes up to me and asks if I want him to clean my shoes. Surprised, I look at my shoes and indeed see they're smeared with some indefinable substance.

I accept! In the end he asks me for 700 rupees; and I pay.” I say SEVEN HUNDRED RUPEES!!!!!!!!!!! Almost half an Indian salary. The trick is as follows: a friend of the young swindler discreetly and quickly dirties the “client's” shoes, then the boy politely asks if he needs the service. Leaving the hotel, we look around a little disorientated in the great Delhi. We're not sure whether to take a taxi or an auto-rickshaw. A rickshaw driver promptly comes up and offers to take us wherever we want for 5 rupees. The temptation to accept is great, also because in Delhi for 5 rupees a tourist can't even buy a cup of tea. If we accept, we're diverted to a tourist shop, only for one minute, where we then feel obliged to buy something and he pockets the commission.

Or, even without buying anything, it's enough for him to take us into the shop; just that earns him ‘points’, and when he reaches 10 his commission is guaranteed... A few days ago a client arrives in Delhi at night. Just outside the airport there's a booth where you book a “pre-paid taxi”; you just give your details and the hotel name and you receive a receipt with the taxi number and the exact amount to pay. On arrival at the destination the receipt is given to the driver and off you go to your room. That's what our client did. Except that he receives a phone call from a mysterious gentleman saying: “I waited for you at the airport with a red car but you didn't come, and now what do we do?” He implies “Who pays?”. Fortunately he didn't listen and it all ended there.

The trick works like this: once at the hotel, the taxi driver passes the details to his accomplice, who calls the hotel and tries it on. Incredible... In a first-class air-conditioned carriage, the best obtainable on the local railways, a tea costs 5 rupees and a dinner about 25-30 rupees. Our clients pay 300 rupees for the same service, the cost of a meal in a decent Delhi restaurant... Yours truly, a few years ago, decides to have dinner on the train. I pay with a 500-rupee note. I wait and wait for the change, but the train leaves; I never saw the change. Me again: I want to buy a bottle of mineral water at the station. At the booth there's a sign warning “Mineral water 10 Rs”. The bottle is given to me and I ask how much it costs. The innocent face of the person on the other side of the counter tells me: “20 rupees”.

I object, pointing at the sign, and he smilingly tells me “Well, then ten rupees”. Pathankot station: Punjab. More elaborate systems that touch the chord of compassion occur in luxury hotels. A few days ago a gentleman goes to the reception of a 5* hotel to change 50 euros. He takes his rupees, about 2500, and returns to his room. After a few minutes he is reached by the employee, in tears, who tells him that perhaps he forgot to give her the 50 euros, or they've been lost. The Indian tragedy, age-old, repeats itself in the room. The gentleman checks his pocket and is sure the euros aren't there, while she weeps and says she'll be fired if she doesn't repay the astronomical sum that's gone missing; the gentleman's wife is moved and insists that another 50 euros be given. The gentleman gives in and in the end everyone is happy and content.

You'll say: “But what's strange about that, it could have been a normal loss of money and a request for a check?” The strange thing is that it's not the first time it has happened, and strangely in 5-star hotels, the ones you think: “If I'm here I'm safe from everything”. The strange thing is that either someone stole the money from the poor cashier or she's faking; the strange thing is that it's strange. The beggars... another scam for the good tourist, hitting his sense of guilt. Behind the beggars there is a huge and often cruel racket. The beggars move easily and quickly from one city to another according to festivals or any other cultural or religious event that attracts tourists to a given place. Dharamsala is one of these. At certain times of year masses of beggars move to the village of McLeod Ganj.

A Western friend who lives here, intrigued at seeing the same beggar woman for years, always with a child of the same size who never grows, investigates. The discovery is “incredible”. The beggar woman, in this case Rajasthani, “rents” the child from a mother, for 50 rupees a day. She passes him off as her own and begs for the hungry little one. The hygienic conditions in which the child is kept are pitiful. Not a bad idea: the mother who rents him gains a bit of peace in the child's absence and 50 rupees for the rental, the beggar woman her daily wage. The friend offers the beggar woman a job at his home as a cleaning lady. She looks at him as if to say “Are you crazy?” and walks off. Another system for softening up the Westerner is this: the badly dressed, dirty child comes up to the tourist and says “no money, only food”.

How can you refuse food to that poor little thing? You take him by the hand, you feel better about yourself, and you take him into the shop where he [the child] buys everything he wants, and the Western dad pays. They say goodbye and the child takes the shopping to his mother. Everyone happy, especially the mother, who resells the purchases... The above will certainly not be a reason to prevent anyone from visiting a country as “incredible” as India. But a tiny bit of care doesn't hurt, to avoid getting into trouble and then, on returning, criticising a whole people because of a few clever rogues! Franco Pizzi Dharamshala, 3 February 2006