The four ages of the universe

I recently listened to a brief description of Hindu beliefs about the cyclic nature of the universe. To give an unfair and short summary, they believe in four ages of man, with varying degrees of virtue, in a repeating cycle. To begin with life was pure, and controlled by one or other of the gods. The next two ages displayed unmemorable variations in these conditions. We are now in the last of the four ages, the age of sin, chaos and dishonesty. Sat in India, this all sounds very plausible!

And what prompts this bad taste, these are my sentiments after a taxi driver tried to overcharge me on the way to the hospital. Ok, I admit, I was looking forward to this one. I was already in my mind conducting an experiment when I asked for the hospital directly not simply it's district. (The last rickshaw to a hospital was an unpleasant man who kept trying to sign that I had been having risky sex to all the other rickshaw drivers, because that was clearly the only reason anyone would go to a hospital). I was not disappointed in my disappointment, the taxi driver tried to charge about 2.5 times the going rate. To be fair to Meghalaya and the Khasi, the taxi driver was both ethnically and culturally an immigrant from the Indian parts of India. The British amalgamated a number of distinct regions to form India... and perhaps my own idea of not cheating the sick for a dollar is something inherited from the Christian doctrine. (I'm fine)