43/ 100 Red Door Dog

The ghats of Varanasi are always alive. No matter what time of the day or night you visit them there will be something happening. Somebody will be bathing in the river, pilgrims will be resting until sunrise to catch the boat home, cattle will be ruminating after a day of eating things they ought not be eating and some enterprising soul will be trying to sell you something.

As very obvious tall, white tourists we are easy targets and everyone wants to sell us their wares. Boat trips are the big one. Even though we have said no to the twenty boatmen we have just walked past they still keep asking as though they think we might have changed our minds in the last ten seconds, or perhaps we were looking for a different boat?

They have choreographed responses to every rejection. If you say no in the morning they will tell you that the evening is best. If you refuse in the evening they say a sunrise tour is better anyway. If it’s the middle of the day they say they will give you a ride anywhere for only ₹500 or whatever you want to pay. We found to our cost that telling them you don’t want a ride today, but will do tomorrow, is a mistake because they are remarkably good at remembering and recognising you. No sooner have you left your apartment the next morning than a smiley chap will spring out from behind a cow and remind you that you said you would take a ride on his boat today.

In a first for me, on our last trip, as we were walking down the ghats a very polite chap walked up to me and declared that I needed a haircut and that he was the man to do it. Now, I always like to have a short cut before I go on holiday so that I don’t have to worry about it whilst I am away so I know it didn’t really need another trim.

This entrepreneurial chap simply wouldn’t take no for an answer. He immediately tried to sell my haircut to an amused Fiona. He grabbed little wispy bits of hair behind my ears and declared that they had to go. He drew imaginary lines around my hairline, showing Fiona how my cut (that she had actually done for me) could be vastly improved. He even said he could sort out the grey bits for me.

I really didn’t want, or need, a cut so I said no the customary 86 times and he finally relented. But he wasn’t finished there – in a last ditch effort to make a Rupee he tried the handshake scam, and I fell for it which annoyed me greatly because I already knew all about it.

In India they know it is very impolite for someone to refuse a handshake. It is a nice greeting and it’s hugely awkward to just leave someone hanging. The very pleasant hairdresser admitted defeat on the hair front and made as though he was going to shake my hand. I took it as an act of saying thanks and goodbye, but he didn’t let go.

Instead he grabbed it with both hands and told me how tense I felt, slowly and forcefully massaging it with his strong hairdresser fingers. He then spent a good amount of time trying to convince me that I really needed a massage and all the while I was attempting to retrieve my hand from his surprisingly strong claws. Eventually I broke free and the defeated chap seemed to have run out of new ways to extract any money from me.

Now, if he’d tried to sell me a nice cold bottle of Mirinda I’d have gladly graced his palms with silver.