India can be a tough country for Americans, who are seen as walking dollar signs and, what as innocents abroad: legitimate targets, easy meat. Within hours of checking in at their five-star South Delhi hotel, they had been importuned, without ,leaving the grounds, by money changers offering them the best black rate in town for their greenbacks, vendors of semi-precious stones which could have been polished pebbles, taxi drivers whose cousins ran a marble factory nearby, by hotel lobby palmists, young men of and women of quality offering serious negotiable currency for their cameras and clothes, older men inquiring of Marco whether Madonna was, in the first place, educated, and in the second place, available, and if so, for what fee; and an elevator pickpocket who was at once incompetent and unflappable, so that when Marco pointed out his hand was in the wrong pocket, the fellow simply extracted the offending limb, smiled broadly and said with a disarming shrug. It is an overcrowded country. What to do, we are used to treating our neighbour’s pocket as our own.
Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 