The corruption dance

No-one can see it, but inside I'm dancing. It's some crazy daydream stroke refuge... It's possibly inspired by the fast show, two sketches in particular. Somewhere between the "In-flay-tion" buzzword in the TV interview, and the fat singer in the shell suit. Except now the backing singers are singing "Corruption" instead of W*.
The clips for anyone who is clueless - "Inflaytion" Muchos philandero
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egQ4NsVO_3M
Disco baby sexy baby hot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1_OMVI_ri0

So why would I be thinking of this little sketch. Well it turns out Baroda (Vadodara) has some quite well organised corruption. After all Gujarat is a developed state, seeing itself as the economic powerhouse of India. It began with trying to find a lodge, and discovering that the first few lodges were "full". Luckily I had some local friends to do the asking so there wasn't any danger of misunderstanding. But something clicked with the third lodge, the man at the desk asked "foreigner"... he helpfully unraveled part of the story. It turns out that as in many places in India some registration is required of foreign guests, and that this requires obtaining a special form from the police and getting them to stamp it once completed. Now all this requires is two helpful interactions with the local Police, I couldn't possibly see how... oh ok. None of the lodges had rooms, occasionally due to my tan and wearing a classically Indian shirt a few mistook me for an NRI, they asked if I had any Indian ID proof. On hearing foreigner there would be a quick shake of the head, in some cases the reaction even bordered on fear. We tried all combinations, I would go in alone, they would go in alone (through this we discovered that most of the lodges did really have rooms), but no success. At one lodge we offered to pay whatever extra it took to get the form processed, this wasn't even considered. Street by street, we split up to cover 5 lodges in a cluster, 3 on one road, 2 lodges away from busy areas... Up and down to a few hotels... in all the first day 20 lodges... friends spare bed.

You may be asking how anyone could profit from my inability to find a lodge. The answer is, there are rooms, for about Rs1200 or Rs1700. This is clearly what PIOs (foreigners of Indian origin) end up paying and thinking little of it. But I'm not paying that.

The second day of hunting wasn't much better. Another 20 lodges, though a few were repeats of the first day just in case they really were full and because my short term memory can't hold that many lodges. What shocks me is that Indians weren't even aware of what was going on in their own town. One auto driver offered to find me a lodge, and thinking my Rs600 budget (increased to Rs800) quite reasonable we hunted... it was his comment that we had tried 12 lodges. But nothing... in the end it was just repeats. One hotel was actually angry when I returned with a second auto driver. They don't even want anyone to see a foreigner going in or out - lest they be accused of breaking the whatever you call this scam.

The spirit of the day is best expressed through the following conversation on entering a medium sized hotel, which I recorded as it was hilarious.

"From which country"

"Hotel now full"

After a while I settled into a routine to save time. As I was walking up to the desk I would say "foreigner" and they would shake their head before I reached the desk. (It doesn't take long to try a lodge in India, as they are usually only about 20m apart, they seem to cluster together).

I gave up and made the most of the rest of the day. Later on I encountered some Kiwis who had suffered the same fate... not alone. However they were just about willing to pay Rs1700 and were probably not stubborn enough to have tried 40 different lodges... But they did give me a clue, a tourist hill spot some 45km away with a government run guest house. Took the next bus!