Two Touts in a Tuk-Tuk

Ordinarily, we know to ignore any tuk-tuk drivers tendering a "friendship" price--they're inevitably touts that will drag you to a rug shop, a jewelry store, and a handicraft emporium before you're allowed to reach your destination. But in Mysore, city of silk, palaces, and con men intensely interested in where you are from and how long you've been in their city, we succumbed.

Our tricksters caught us off guard--they introduced themselves in a vegetarian restaurant, not by soliciting from the street; they were middle-school teachers (probably true, knowing how much teachers are valued financially around the world); they spoke casually of an incense-making competition we might want to take a look at.

Actually, they really only caught me off guard. Isaac was astute enough to notice they had entered the restaurant only after we did and hadn't ordered anything to eat. But I protested: why was he always so suspicious?

As soon as we got in the autorickshaw, I knew why. First our driver asked us where we were staying, then he inquired after the price, and finally, after shaking his head in disgust at the way some hotels were willing to fleece their customers, he proposed to show us some more affordable options. We demurred, but still let him drive us several kilometers outside of the city center to an incense "competition". Sometimes, protecting yourself too strenuously against any tricks and traps means shutting out the world beyond your hotel room, the world you've given up your paradisical Inner Sunset apartment and boarded a series of expensive and uncomfotable flights to see. We decide we'd let ourselves be lightly scammed.

The competition turned out to be a factory, the factory turned out to have one employee actively making incense. What follows is the basic script of a drama that unfolds hourly in the back alleys and markets of Mysore(we went through it twice more, cursorily, without buying anything, in Devaraja market).

First, the salesman will show his prospective customers how a stick of incense is made, using an older woman or, if he's lucky, his brother's cute twelve-year old kid to demonstrate. He'll explain how to mix sandalwood, gum powder, and water into a thick dough--"like a chapati." This makes the tourists laugh, at least the first time they hear it. He'll then quickly summarize the rest of the process and finish off with a few fascinating facts. Did we know one woman can make 10,000 sticks in a day?

After this introduction, the salesman will move onto the real money-maker: adulterated versions of essential oils. Among the oils he'll paint onto your inner arms with are white, black, and green jasmine; sandalwood; lotus. Do we know Calvin Klein Eternity? This is just nine flower oil. Do we know Kenzo? This is just watermelon seed oil. They're such shysters, Calvin and Kenzo, overcharging us for these natural products, but we can outwit them by buying a ten mm bottle for 100 rupees (about $2.50) from our new friends.

And our salesman has many friends among our people. At this point, he'll bring out a few cloth-bound composition books filled with references from other tourists foolish enough to squander their money and admit it in writing. See? Here is someone from Germany...and Holland...and France...and USA.

You're meant to admire these testimonials and then become an official paying friend yourself. If you resist, at this point the farce turns into a morality play: the salesman ends with a warning against all those other unscrupulous dealers out there.

Our visit proceeded according to the manual with one slight variation: at the conclusion of our sandalwood business, one of our salesmen, a Bob Marley aficionado named Max,informed us of his personal motto: "drink and die, smoke and fly." Then he offered to sell us marijuana oil and hash while his sidekick, a dark skinny kid in bell bottom jeans, sang to us of "boomshaka." I thought he had been watching pirated Ali G videos, but he assured us this was a traditional Indian way to refer to the act of getting stoned.

I was ready to move on, but Isaac agreed to have a look at this second set of wares. Max led us to a small back room decorated with a glossy 4 x 6 foot poster of the Saudi skyline, called for one of his minions to bring us chai in thimble-sized plastic cups, and brought out a small vial of the pot oil. We expressed our admiration for his clever product, which could easily be shipped or sprinkled onto a cigarette and smoked on a train, but we declined to sample or to buy. Isaac, in fact, refused to drink the chai, fearing it be drugged.