Damn RUCKSACK !!!

Hurtling down the street in a tin can called a Maruti Omni on the streets of Kanpur, I finally realized that my body has way too many muscles, much more than I ever imagined.... each one of them ached. The realization dawned on me that my eardrums are pretty resilient too... they could take the constant honking ...
The problem of Kanpur streets ... well ... the place itself is part of prime cowbelt ... does that explain something ... :)) ..
The streets ... (if you could call them that) are inhabited by vehicles of all kinds, cycles, rickshaws, horse/mare/bullock-drawn buggies, pedestrians, trucks, autorickshaws ... AND you are welcome to encroach the part of the road meant for oncoming traffic ... ever seen a tractor taking a U-turn on a busy thoroughfare all of 2 cars wide .... :) ... ??

When I stepped down @ the Kanpur railway station ... I was surrounded by 20 people trying to draw my attention to beckon them to hire their taxi/auto/whatever else .....
I wonder why I had attracted this swarm .. I was NOT expensively dressed, nor did I have an arm candy, nor am I endowded with greek god looks which otherwise could be spelt "expensive" ...
Everybody else ... who matched my profile -- regular single guy, brown skinned (like millions of my countrymen), ordinary clothes (jeans & t-shirt) and ordinary looks (I beg you to disagree please :)..... was walking past happily ... without being hassled much ... just a disinterested query from the "transporatation suitors" ...

Then I looked around ... them and me ... and lo and behold! it dawned on me ... I was carrying a RUCKSACK ... and that is a typically rich-kid straight from Canada or USA piece-of-baggage ... I was being perceived as one of those dollar-earning, IT-empowered yuppies, back to small town India ... prime target for a rip-off -- after all a mark-up of a few rupees over the "ordinary common indian's fare" would only mean a few cents for me ...

It was a fascinating experience.... I never knew the power of the RUCKSACK ... now i do ... and! hey it also earns you those second glances from small-town hotties ;-) ... That isnt a disparaging remark as some of them are quite hot ... well! the power of CableTV .. and Femina Miss India ...
But more on that @ a later point in time ...