To Serve, Protect, and Mug

Tashi Delek everyone, and Happy Losar!

It's the second day of Tibetan New Year, 2133 on the Tibetan calendar, sign of the male Fire Dog. Losar consists of setting off vast quantities of fireworks and getting very, very drunk. (Also of prayer, traditional dance, and speeches by monks, but mainly, for me at least, fireworks and getting drunk.) I was celebrating Losar quite heavily with some people in the street yesterday night, which is when I took this drunken photo of some fellow revellers - from left are a Nepalese guy who lives here now, a British guy of Indian descent, and an American guy. The British guy told a harrowing tale of how he was accosted by the police, who then requested to see his passport, which he didn't have on him, at which point demanding a hundred rupee "fine," and threatening him with sticks until he paid. An American girl came by and told of the exact same thing happening to her, except that she had managed to get away without paying. I was rather distressed by these tales, but wasn't too worried about myself, since I always carry my passport around with me.

Well, at about 1am I left my friends and went for a walk for some fresh air in preparation for going home to bed, and guess what happened? Yep, along came a trio India's finest, drunker than me, demanding to see my passport. I produced it, which seemed to impress them, and they proceeded by asking, rather honestly i thought, for a hundred rupees "whiskey money." The American girl had given me confidence that I could get out of this without payment or broken bones, so I pretended not to speak English very well, saying "no thank-you, no whiskey." They didn't seem to buy it though, because one of them raised their stick and screamed something along the lines of "you have to give it to us because we have this!" They were so drunk by this time that they probably wouldn't have even been able to hit me, and I was too drunk to be scared, so I laughed. This made them laugh too, and eventually I got out of it by giving them a couple of beedies, costing me less than a cent, and nodding understandingly as they ranted drunkenly at me in Hindi. Just goes to show... hmm, what does it go to show? Alcohol can be your friend as well as your enemy? A smile can get you out of anything? Avoid Indian cops? Something like that, anyway.