Skip to main content

At the airport bookstore

"I have changed my mind. I have seen a better one at another store. Can you give me my money back?"

"I am afraid that is not possible. I have put it through the till."

"Yes, you can. You just do n't want to"

A few moments later...

"My wife wants to return this. She has seen a better one"

"I am sorry. If I do this, I will have to pay for it"

"You can. I will sign any paper you want"

The girl at the desk out of exasperation gives the man his money and takes back the item and disconsolately records the transaction. She may well have to pay for it.

The item is a fridge magnet! The girl at the counter is Nepali, the couple are English and in their late twenties.

I am kicking myself for not intervening so I buy a book (a collection of short stories) and as I pay tell the girl that I will not be changing my mind.

She smiles.

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 4, 2013 at 7:29 AM

    its true, the owner will take the money out of her(already meek) wages. wonder why so many tourists assume the culture they came from came with them, as if it had brought a ticket and rode on the airplane behind them, keeping them company.

    good on you for at least feel acknowledged and respected.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nicholas ColloffApril 4, 2013 at 7:33 AM

      Yes, I wished I had said something at the time to the couple...It was not the only example that day of cultural insensitivity.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Red Shambala

Nicholas Roerich is oft depicted as a spiritual seeker, peace visionary, author of numberless paintings, and a brave explorer of Central Asia. However, Andrei Znamenski in his 'Red Shambala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia' has him perform another role - that of geopolitical schemer. The scheming did have at its heart a religious vision - of a coalition of Buddhist races in Central Asia that would establish a budding utopia - the Shambala of the title - from which the truths of Buddhism (and co-operative labour) would flow around the globe. This would require the usurpation of the 13th Dalai Lama to be replaced by the Panchen Lama guided by the heroic saviour (Roerich) who appears above dressed for the part. In the achievement of these aims, the Roerichs (including his wife, Helena, who had a visionary connection with 'Mahatmas' whose cryptic messaging guided their steps) were willing to entertain strange bedfellows that at one time include...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...
13 comments
Read more

The Jewel in the Crown

I spent six months in Nizhny Novgorod ostensibly as both the chair and the director of a micro-finance fund. I must confess much of that work -apart from the spectacular resignation of my predecessor as director - has faded from view but what I vividly recall is at weekends progressing through Paul Scott's 'The Raj Quartet' and subsequently re-watching its painstaking and triumphant dramatization (by Granada) that I had watched, long before, on the television. It was without doubt my most deeply cherished reading experience to date. This extraordinary narrative of the British in the last, declining days of colonial rule that begins with the doomed relationship of Hari Kumar and Daphne Manners, her rape, and the injustice of Kumar as accused by Ronald Merrick, the Police Superintendent, and one of the most malevolent characters ever created in fiction. He is a magnified alter ego of Scott himself especially the sharply, destructively repressed homosexuality. The narrati...
Post a Comment
Read more