Sweets

I was in Jaipur, in Rajasthan, walking back to my hotel after dark on a November evening in 1977. It was my first time in India. I’d been there only ten days, but already I was a cautious traveler. In Delhi, I’d been flimflammed out of $250 (enough for three and a half months’ living!), and in Amritsar, on the day I’d crossed into India from Pakistan, I’d found myself camping and eating with more than a million pilgrims who’d come to the Golden Temple for Guru Nanak’s four-hundred-year anniversary. I knew how a day could quickly spiral out of control, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way.