Giving Hawkers the Finger
Not that finger, silly! :o)
 Sunglasses, anyone? | As at any high-profile tourist place in India, the hawkers at Kanyakumari can be relentless. Beautiful postcards, madam? No matter where I'm standing, someone's trying to sell me something. Saying "no" rarely works; they always think they can convince me, and it wears me out trying to explain why I don't need what they have to sell. Even walking away isn't effective; I've had some of them follow me for blocks. |
So when one of them approaches me as I'm waiting for sunrise, I brace myself for a fight.
Sunglasses, madam? madam? You need sunglasses?
With annoyance at having my attention drawn away from the sunrise, I turn to him and put my finger over my lips in a shhhhh gesture. He looks puzzled, and falls silent for a moment.
Meditation? he asks.
Yes, yes, meditation! I answer, figuring that greeting the sun is as legitimate a form of meditation as any other.
He quietly walks away.
Wow! That was a first.
I try this trick again as I walk past the rows of vendor stalls. Each time I pass a vendor who shouts at me, I place my finger over my lips and softly say shhhhhh! I think of it as my own personal form of non-violent resistance, in a situation that in the past has bordered on leading me to violence.
They eye me with a mixture of amusement and bewilderment, but one by one they fall silent.
I wonder if in India the gesture means something other than shhhh??
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Update: If you liked this hawker story, you might also enjoy this one: Is Not Possible, Being Shhhh!
You think that will work in my classroom of 22 five year old
children????????
What a perfect solution. If in a few months, you can see this gesture all
over India, we'll know who started it. It could be like all those scenes
out of Forrest Gump. You know where is the one who started the running
craze etc.
