I had only myself
to blame for the shoe-shine trick. Shopping in
the heat with a tummy bug is not to be recommended,
particularly in Delhi's disorientating Connaught
Circle. The taxi had disappeared and, as I stood
on the pavement edge trying to get my bearings,
a man approached and said: “Bird shit. On your
shoe.”
I looked down to see a large khaki dollop unlike
anything I had seen produced by a bird before,
not even at the zoo. I looked up at the cloudless
empty sky and looked back at the man who just
happened to have a shoe-shine kit with him.
“You were lucky,”
he said as he started work on the shoe. “A few
more inches and it would have been your head.”
There seemed little
doubt I had been duped, that this big brown bird
dropping had been surreptitiously deposited on
my shoe. The story, however, was plausible enough
to make it difficult to challenge without having
witnessed what happened.
Large vultures
did indeed live in the centre of Delhi and it
was remotely possible that one of them might have
been caught short above my head. I was full of
admiration. This was new; an encounter with an
expert exponent of the great bird dropping scam.
Did he have a bottle of Acme Miracle Bird Droppings
in his bag? He wasn't for telling. He wanted 350
rupees - sufficient to buy a brand new pair of
shoes. I gave him 100, probably as much as he
would normally earn in a week……
