I stumble off a bus in Varanasi after a 24-hour ride. It is almost dark. The bus, the street, everything is swarming with people and things. I scramble to the top of the bus, which is also swarming, find my luggage, throw it to the pavement, and jump down. A wiry man in ragged pants and plastic shoes has already staked it out.

         This is my introduction to India, and the rickshaw man.

         “I want to go to the Hotel de Paris,” I say. I had read about it in the Lonely Planet guidebook.

         The rickshaw man bares his teeth, stained red with betel nut. “Which Hotel Paris?”

         I fumble with the guidebook.

         “TwoHotels Paris,” he says. “You want new hotel? Four-star, out of town, 750 rupees? Or old hotel, 250 rupees–”

         “The old one.” It’s got to be the one the guidebook calls “a wonderful old-style place in large grounds.”

         “That one, they changed the name to the Hotel Parvaaz de Paris,” he says, bobbing with enthusiasm. “Not yet in the book.”

         “OK, let’s go. Wait—how much?”

         “Two rupees.” Less than 25 cents. I am suspicious of this driver, but happy that he is cheap. I pile into the bench seat behind him. He stands on the bicycle pedals through a kilometer of buzzing auto-rickshaws and lumbering Tata trucks. On a side street we stop at the new, five-story Hotel Parvaaz. No “Paris” about it—and no “large grounds,” either. I’ve been tricked. But I’m tired, and accept it.

         The next day I hire a different rickshaw man. He takes me to the real Hotel de Paris, less than a kilometer away—large grounds, just like the guidebook said. He tells me that because the Hotel de Paris is in the guidebook, it has enough customers; the Parvaaz does not.

         “You have no booking, the Paris pays me five rupees,” he says. “You have booking, then nothing.”

         “And the Parvaaz?” 

         A pause. “Fifty rupees. Parvaaz no good place.” 

         The Parvaaz is charging me the same price as the Paris. But when I tell the Parvaaz I am moving out, the room rate comes down by two-thirds. The clerk grins: “The first night you come, the cheap rooms were full.” I ask to see the “cheap” room, and it is nearly the same as the one I had. I go to the Paris.

         This kind of thing happens again and again. As a Westerner on my own in India, I am a mark. Not to the businessmen and professors I meet on Indian trains. They are open, and interested in me. But to the shop owner, the tout, the taxi driver I am a piece of fat meat.

         Especially to the rickshaw man. He lies. Ask him to go to the government hotel that pays no bribes, and he says it is full. It is not full. Ask him to go to a government shop, and he says it is closed. It is not closed. He knows it is not closed. It just does not pay him a 30 percent commission.

         I quickly learn to agree on a price before I sit down in his rickshaw. “Pay as you like,” he says, but it doesn’t work. If I don’t pay as he likes, he will make a scene. He will argue, beseech, whine and cringe. He will play on my humanity, my guilt, my patience. He will squeeze these feelings until they are all gone.

         He will do this for amounts of money that seem absurdly small when I reflect on it. But I don’t reflect on it. I am in India, and I want the same price as Indians. I ask the hotel clerk the right price to go to the fort, and I insist on that price. I try this many times, but I never get the clerk’s price. Never. I am a foreigner, and the rickshaw man knows I can pay more. He will pedal away before giving me the clerk’s price.

         The rickshaw man is not openly hostile. He is helpful, friendly, even fawning. But it is not genuine. The rickshaw man who confides in me about the Parvaaz takes me to a certain restaurant for 10 rupees, agreed in advance. By the next day he has become “my” rickshaw man. He insists on waiting for me out on the street. Since he is my “friend” I don’t haggle with him the second time. He takes me a similar distance, and I offer him 15. I figure I’m giving him a tip; he replies with an ugly smile as if I’m trying to cheat him. He demands 20. He knows that I feel guilty about being pedaled around by a skinny man in plastic shoes. He has deftly built up a “friendship” with me and cashed it in for five rupees. I never see him again. 

         I tell myself, don’t worry, it’s only five rupees—about 65 cents. The aggravation is not about losing the money. It’s about losing control. It’s about being a piece of fat meat.

It is worst in tourist towns. Get in a rickshaw or a taxi and the driver will start trying to sell you a “tour.” This means going to a shop—at Varanasi, a silk shop; at Agra, a marble shop; at Jaipur, a carpet shop.