Turning a buck.

We're in Mysore.  Beautiful place.  As I sit here in this garden-top restaurant, I look out over a park directly across the street.  Around said park is a walking path, on which I trod this morning for a little jog.  Very nice.  Peaceful.  Perhaps owing to the early hour, I was completely free of human interaction.  Which is to say, no one asked me to avail myself of their goods or services.

On return to our room, I noticed a bathroom scale tucked under a shelf, and decided to weigh myself.
     "What's seventy point eight kilograms?  In pounds?"  Rebecca was on the computer, and rather than think, I thought I'd have google help further render my brain a jelly-filled pie. 
     "One fifty eight point two-nine."

Hmmm...I've slowly been dropping weight.  I'm approximately the weight I was as an eleventh grader, before I discovered the joys of beer.  Which ties in nicely with my reflections while running around the footpath earlier this morning.

The world spins round on the wings of commerce.  That point is made abundantly clear on the streets of any and all places Indian.  ""Rickshaw, sir?  Ma'am?  Sari?"  From the beggar, to the child entrepreneur, to the shopkeeper to lord Tata turning the gears of industry, India knows how to turn a buck.  And me?  I seem to slowly fade away in both mass and money.  Which is to say:  I've just never been very good at turning a buck.  Some people seem to have a nose for the point of ignition, as it were, between the fuel and the flame of commerce.  Sadly, often as not, my little fire sputters and smokes.  Mind, I'm at peace with this, and have learned to celebrate the art of conservation rather than generation.  Which brings me to reflect on a most unique event, at least for me.

Three days ago, while in Hampi, Rebecca and I took in a pay-per-view historical site known as the Lotus Mahal.  As foreign tourists, we were asked to pay 250 rupees each for entry (as opposed to 10 rupees for Indian nationals.)  It was all very up and up, with a fancy ticket issued which could be used at a number of other sites, provided we used it on the same day.  I joked with the man behind the wire mesh selling the ticket that I would like the child's discount, as it more aptly suited my intellect.  I then commented on the fact that I had already seen the other sites, and so this little bonus would go un-used.  When we proceeded through the gate, the young man tearing the ticket gave a furtive glance left and right, then sotto voce suggested I might wish to sell him my ticket stub on exit for two hundred rupees.  Again, I may qualify for a child's ticket, but it didn't take long to realize this man had a bit of a game going on.  Probably he was in cahoots with the ticket seller, who would issue my (used) ticket to some unsuspecting foreigner (at a fee of five-hundred rupees total) with no record of this extra sale, and the two of them would waltz away with a three hundred rupee gain when one discounts the two hundred he had promised me.  Rebecca had her doubts.
     "What if they have a deal with the local police?  Who will then arrest you and ask for serious baksheesh?"  Hmmm.  The girl has a way of raining on one's parade.  Almost to the point of ruining my pleasure of the Lotus Mahal and attendant elephant stables.  Almost.  The point is, herein lay my chance to actually hand over a bit of goods to an Indian...a veritable God of commerce, and to have that deity anoint me with the coin of the realm, as it were.  As they say in the Bible, a buck's a buck.
     "I'm doing it."

And so it came to pass.  On exit of the site, our man (who had discretely covered his official uniform with a sweater)  stepped away from the gate, gave a quick glance left and right, and handed me two crisp hundred rupee notes.  I reciprocated with the promised product.  And went my merry way. 

It should be noted:  As I write this (and shared with Rebecca the content of my blog) she shared where she is in a book she is reading, in which the protagonist has been in an Indian jail for some unknown deed and languishes in a tick/lice/blood-sucker infested prison cell.
     "You should think about that..."
 
 Indeed.  But even that can't change the feeling of victory--admittedly small--I felt when I stood just that much closer to the flame.  And breathed in the rare air of the Gods.