Day 24: blur

It’s difficult to tell apart my four nights and five days in Pushkar. They all blended together into a hazy half memory. Partly because I spent most of the days with Andrew chain smoking hash and partly because my pace here was much slower. I wasn’t doing much like sightseeing or walking around. I was mostly relaxing.
Pushkar, like most places in India, has its own set of scams but I enjoyed one of them. On my first day I encountered two of those scams: gypsy girls who chase single or groups of foreign men take them to a chai place, chat them up then who knows what happens after that. Clearly that was not one for me. The other involved men walking down the street with a Rajasthani musical instrument, they start talking to foreigners, take them to a chai place, play a tune or two, then ask for money in return for a CD with some music by the performer at hand. The only reason I still consider this a kind of scam because, well, they ask for too much money and there is no guarantee that there actually is music on the much scratched CD. The first musician I met was smiling at me flirtatiously and I smiled back. I didn’t even notice he had an instrument or that he was a musician. It became apparent that by me smiling back at him I had agreed for him to follow me. He then asked if I wanted to go with him for chai and I said ok. I am not a big fan of chai, I don’t like milk in my tea and I hate cardamom. He proceeded to play a song. It was good, kind of funny with a chorus line that sounds like “ bum, ooh” vaguely sexual. Another musician, a much older man with a colorful turban and a big mustache, came in and sat next to me. He stole the show. His music sounded much more practiced, older, better. He was also very photogenic. I was happy to oblige and pay for the “CD” because that picture was worth it, plus I got to have a couple of songs played for me.
On my second day, I fell for the other potential scam. I had just woken up and was in a good mood. This boy, probably 10, came up to me and said he wants food. I thought to myself fine; I’ll buy him something to eat. I asked him what he wants and he said he will take me to the shop. We walked down a couple of streets and ended up at a grocer. I thought he wanted candy or something, but no, he wanted me to buy him and his family the two main ingredients to make bread: a big bag of flour and a box of ghee. For a moment my heart softened and I thought why not, but I didn’t realize that it would all add up to 500 rupees or so, which is only about 11 bucks. Even then I thought “that’s fine, this is gonna feed a family for a while.” I was feeling good about my good deed. After I paid the grocer told me to take the flour (it was a heavy bag) to his family or else he would turn around and sell it and the ghee to another shop and take the money. Immediately my smile was gone and I was now aware of the possibility that I am being scammed. “Is the grocer in on this, does this boy work for him?” I walked with the boy for a while and along the way people would look at him and smile and say “Chapati chapati.” meaning bread. I kept wondering what was going on. We walked for a kilometer then when we passed the police station (I was surprised there was one at all) the boy said to walk fast because the police shouldn’t see us. This is when I just didn’t even care anymore whether this bread will feed a family or if someone just made 10 bucks off me. The final straw came when the boy took me to a slum area and went through an opening in a corrugated metal fence and asked me to follow him. I passed him the flour and told him “this better be for your family!” and walked away.