Day 40. I got a 25 rupee storage bin for my gear and noticed it had a bed. I crashed for several hours. Delhi is chilly but surprisingly clean. I discovered 10 or so people using the [storage] place in a similar way. It's owned by a Sikh who escaped having it incinerated only because it's built over the gas tanks for the Regal Theater. So this is probably the other extreme of my accommodation. A flophouse, but it's clean, one block from Connaught, and safe. The Sikh proprietor is something else. Tell him you want a reasonable room. He'll tell you the price is reasonable but the room is not. He showed me where the light switch was and I actually have twin beds and a fan.
I discover the denizens year are using it as a long-term crush pad, which it is not. Their entire conversation is dominated by telling each other where the next el-cheapo roof is. You can't expect them to know where is a good club with entertainment, or how far is the air-conditioned bus. Next to me is an Englishman with his ugly girlfriend. They're in that 8 x 12 all damn day asking all newcomers for books to read. He somehow proud of the fact they've been at it for 18 months. I'd say today I did this, this, this, and this and he’d right away start explaining the local price structures. I question the wisdom of spending hours or days to save such minute sums of money.
I'm here four days and I came to see Taj Mahal. These inmates couldn't understand why I'm going now for 150 rupees rather than wait five months when the price drops to 38 rupees. I met a German couple who approached me for money. The girl had got diphtheria and no medical. They were expecting a Telex but said no food for two days. I believe them when they told me they'd asked 50 people for help or it may be I got taken at the puppy they had with them was definitely very hungry. I bought them a meal for 24 rupees, about 2 dollars. He said her mother was sending money. I cannot understand why I'm always bailing out people my own age who have parents in a position to help them.
I got some fine advice from the American Express office. Very helpful and witty. Want to try Indian food? Wait, he says, till you get back from Agra. Hmmm, good thinking.
The beggars. I usually keep small change. But I have limits. God dammit, beg in the daytime. Next, never a woman with small babies. If they can do that, they can work. It's more pronounced here, were you see a relatively prosperous woman selling fruit. Next to her you see a perfectly healthy woman sitting under some trees with tons of unpicked fruit with her hand out. Institutionalized poverty.
Delhi is typically British with a climate much like Seattle in the summer. The streets are spoke-shaped out from traffic circles, like Paris. Most of the bargains are things you don't need.
[Author's note: it would take forever to explain today's entry in its proper light, so bear in mind the circumstances. I'm living in a storage bin that other tourists are using it for a hotel. It would've been burned to the ground in revenge for Gandhi's assassination had it not been located beside a landmark. I continually met European travelers who had no money. Well, what were they doing overseas? Too many people seemed obsessed by how much money they can save by doing nothing—a bad reason to travel.
The quip about women with children begging is due to years I spent working for the telephone company. A third of my check went to taxes for single women who get more welfare money the more illegitimate children they produced. After a while you know why they're having all these children. Getting pregnant while one is already on welfare is the height of parental irresponsibility from my point of view. This is not negotiable.
I mentioned the bargains. There are things for sale like handmade window frames and half-size carved wooden elephants. Just not something I use every day.]
[Author's note 2016: I should have specified at the time I helped the sick couple, I did so because the puppy was also sick. You cannot expect me to support people who leave western society to go live in backward areas of the world. It is irresponsible. I would not stop them, but nor would I help them. India and such places, I said long ago, will only become "great" when they stop being India. they have not progressed an inch in 3,000 years.]
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