Assaulted...

Hey all,

As I mentioned in the last post, when Elaine and I were walking between City Markety and Cubbon Park this past Thurday, I had a slightly more violent than usual encounter on the streets of Bangalore. Here is the story:

From City Market we walked to Cubbon Park, and on the was I was essentially ASSAULTED. At this point in the summer I'm pretty much completely used to beggars and salespeople on the street and know how to deal with them. This is that I initially thought this guy who came up to me, saying some unintelligible word over and over was, and I brushed him off. This is when he *grabbed* me. Let me be clear: beggars on the street will touch you and paw at your arms to get your attention, but they don't grab you this. This guy actually was using force, and kept saying the same thing over and over, which I couldn't parse. I managed to push him off of me, and tried to walk away quickly, and he followed me just as quickly. At this point Elaine hadn't noticed what was going on and was getting ahead of me in the crowd. I couldn't get away from this guy by going forward, and he was blocking my path backwards, so I literally jumped over the rail on the side of the sidewalk into the street and ran down the street to catch up with Elaine, and when I caught her I had her walk fast (hoping that the guy would stop pursuing me). He *ran* after me on the sidewalk and caught up to me just after I caught up to Elaine. He grabbed me again and turned me around, still saying the same thing. It was at this point that I realized he was saying "Country! Country! Country!" over and over. I said "U.S." and tried to turn and break away from his grip. I managed to turn, but he grabbed my arm with one hand and actually *grabbed the skin on my back* with the other (you know those lumps that you have on either side of your spine? Yes, he grabbed that) and turned me around. At this point I just looked him in the eyes (he had now somehow gotten hold of both my arms and we were standing face to face, grappling) and got him to pause. He calmed down a bit (he started saying "Country" more slowly and quietly), and I started saying "America", "US", "United States", until he finally said "America? US?", and I said "Yes, America". At this point he let go of my arms with one hand (still holding on with the other), shook my free hand with his free hand, let go with the other hand, patted me on the shoulder (while kind of keeling forward like he was out of breath), and said "Sorry, Sorry." And that was the end of it. He just walked away. I heard another Indian guy on the street mutter "Oh my God...". It is one of the most bizarre experiences that I've had here, and I sat down to calm down for a while afterwards. He was a fairly small and old guy, so I think that I could have taken care of myself if he had gotten more aggressive, but I don't really want to think about what would happen to me if I decked an Indian guy in the middle of a crowded street....