Banana Kings

From Delhi, I travel to the first city of the Golden Triangle: Jaipur, The Pink City. I arrive in the evening and am too excited to sit in my hotel room for four hours before bedtime, so I strap up my boots and start walking along the streets. The chill in the air is a bit too much for me and my collard shirt, and I begin thinking about buying a sweater. All of a sudden these three kids approach me with open hands. How nice! "5 rupees" they ask for. Like most beggars, including children, you are not supposed to give in to their subtle demands, but they are persistent, and now they are calling me "friend." Instead of giving them the 5 rupees (less than a penny) they ask for, I tell them to show me where a sweater shop is, and then I would give them 5 rupees. They probably did not understand a word I said, but nonetheless, we end up at a sweater shop. The guy working there picks out 5 or 6 different sweaters, just one or two I would actually buy. I ask the kids which one I should get, and of course, they choose the ugliest sweater of the options presented, so I buy it and take off - with the kids trailing of course. At this point, instead of just three kids, there are now 9. I give the one kid 5 rupees secretly, but there are the 8 others still smiling and staring at me. I could have just brushed all of them away and left, like you are actually supposed to, but this is the beginning of my trip, and I am still a softy, so we all go to the market and I buy them all a banana. We share in delight this cheap snack (less than a penny for each banana) snap a photo, and we all part from each other happy.