Back in Delhi

The hotel was a small businessman’s hotel -- clean, functional and pleasant, except for the dining room. It was located in a very active but low scale business district which was difficult to walk around. Across from our hotel was a small homeless encampment where we observed evening and morning cooking fires. The members of this encampment disappeared during the day, presumably to menial very low paying jobs.

A small encounter -- breaking through the language barrier: Walking back from a bakery to our hotel, I stopped to buy a few bananas from a vendor cart. Knowing the vendor wouldn’t be able to speak English, I held up three fingers. He cut three bananas from their stalk, put them in a bag and handed them to me. I gave him the smallest bill, 10 Rp (worth 25 cents) and started to walk away. A passerby called out and pointed to the vendor who was cutting me another three bananas to give me my money’s worth.