Rough Ideas

With possibly one noted exception, everyone here is after your money. I’ve been witnessing the most crude and subtle forms of manipulation and extortion, and this is all going on with no apparent shame.
Even when confronted, the few I did confront oppenly admitted that’s the way it works here. You’re a tourist, and being ripped off is some kind of rite of passage. Some of it isactually so big I refused to believe people would have the audacity and shamelessness to do it.

To me, the experience was utterly confusing. It becomes incredibly difficult to really understand the level of neediness, and make out the people desperate for help from those who don’t necessarily need it.

Fortunately the lesson only cost me around #25 in donations and over-spending. But that, for India, is a subtantial amount.

Since I have also been cheated out of a substantial amount of money at home at the same time, having not been paid my last salary, it raises the question of sustenance, big time.
I’m not sure why I always choose to trust people to the point where I’m a lot worse off. I seem to only see the good in anyone, till break point.

I guess I have a choice now, to learn this lesson. But still, distinguishing between what is actually going on and what I feel, is not something I’m good at, in all and any area of life, and I’m not sure how to learn to make a distinction.

I’m out of here tomorrow, and glad of it. Off to pack.