December 9, 2012. New Delhi, India.
The air quality in New Delhi during the second week of December 1998 was horrific. Cloudless and mild, the sky was soaked in a grey/white miasma of muck. I have no idea what building I was in, but I asked as question.
“Where is American Express?”
“Across the park. When you leave here you’ll see a pink building.”
I exit. There is no pink building. The best I can see is a group of buildings. Like something in a fog.
Because I’m in no particular hurry, I find a park bench, pull out a book (there were no cell phones then), and attempt to read.
It is totally unsafe for a gringo to sit alone in a park in India. It’s one of about one million rules for gringo travel in India. Rule #1, of course, is whether you should be there in the first place. It's another planet and the average gringo isn’t prepared for a place like India.
All this is still new to me. I’ve been in India for only a day or two. A man approaches. Sits next to me. He doesn’t want to chat or bum a cigarette.
Within a few seconds there’s probe in my ear. I pull away.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“I’m cleaning out your ear, Sir.”
“But it doesn’t need cleaning.”
“But it does, Sir. Look.”
He shows me a gob of goo which startles me. Nobody has that much wax in his ear.
Why I allowed him to continue I do not know. But I do.
That is my first experience of gringo-on-the-ground-in-New-Delhi. There will be more. Plenty more.
I gather my stuff, take off to the illusive pink building. It’s still lost in the fog of filthy air particles.
As I’m walking, still a little dazed about the impromptu cleaning of my ear, when I hear a voice next to me.
“Sir, sir. You have shit on shoe.”
“What?”
“Yes, sir. You have shit on you shoe.”
I look down. And there, on the top of my right hiking boot is a pile of shit. Poop. I mean, really, what do you say to someone when you look down a see a pile of shit on your shoe.
“Sir, Sir,” the voice said. “I can clean it off. Please let me”
Now, I don’t know what I did with that question, but I did the first thing that came to my mind. I started shaking it off. As much as I could.
By now, I was able to make out the pink building in the morning muck of a December day in Delhi. I headed to the building, found a men’s room and took off my boot. I drenched it in water. I let the faucet run forever. I’m not sure I was violated or just plain grossed out.
Really. What just happened there? Some man snuck up beside me, managed to put this pile of god-knows-what on my boot and have the presence of mind to say, “Sir, sir. You have shit on your shoe.”
I mean, where did he get it? He must have scooped it up, deposited it in a bag, carried into the park then look for the first unsuspecting gringo.
There are two ways to approach this event. One is to be continuously disgusted by this vulgar act.
The second is to file it under T – Travel Humor.
And that is what I did.
It was immediately filed underneath the Indonesian prostitute story.
But that’s for another day.
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