2nd class compartment Haridwar to Delhi.
Rs 25 breakfast. bread and cutlets. After handing the food over to us, he said he didn’t have change, not to worry he would collect it later. He Trusted Us.
After that we caught him several times, wanted to pay him, but he never had change and never took the money.
Then once, just before Delhi, he remembered us an after thought, took money from us, promised to be back with the change in a jiffy, now it was our turn to Trust Him and he was OFF!. That was the last we saw of him.
A crook loses nothing in trusting an honest person, but honest people have to be wary of trusting crooks.
We also saw an english speaking possibly Indian con artist approaching foreigners (sequentially) and dishing out some sob story we couldn’t hear and collecting cash from them. One foreigner was saying “I don’t know if we are being kind or stupid, but we hope we are being kind”.
My problem exactly. Having just dished out Rs 100 to a Marathi looking family who said they had lost all their money, with the fear that if we did not help they might be really inconvenienced, and if we did helpt them they would be laughing behind our backs….
It is easy to turn down a beggar, when you know that that there is a beggary lord manipulating our compassion and exploiting the beggars. But what about situations when the “begging” persons speak your language and dress like you? Then most of us can be had. We try to err on the side of compassion. That is where we can be had.
