Begging, Langar, and the Real Ways to Help in Delhi
Everyone I’ve met here, drivers, hotel staff, other writers, said the same thing before I even asked: don’t give them cash. It sounded harsh the first time. It doesn’t anymore.
The Ruin and the Treasure: Hauz Khas
The rooms are often roofless. Birds nest in the cornices. Chipmunks scurry around like rats but cuter.The stone is warm in the afternoon sun and cool in the shadow. Young Indian couples looking for a place to make out seem to favor it.
The Water at Bangla Sahib
The child-guru, the well, the epidemic, the water given freely to whoever needed it, the guru dying of the same disease he’d spent himself curing in others.
Fake Guide Stories of the Taj Mahal and Agra
How do you know when a tour guide is lying? Their lips are moving.
My First Kulhad Chai
twenty Rupees, One Cup, Total Destruction Somewhere on the Yamuna Expressway, between Delhi and Agra, in the kind of darkness that only exists on Indian highways at night, a cup was murdered. There were no streetlights, just the occasional flare of a truck’s high beams and a dhaba glowing up ahead like a campfire. This …
Confessions of A Reluctant Tipper in India
Dancing around it would make the rest of this dishonest: I detest tipping culture.