There’s warning to travelers in the Lonely Planet about various gem scams in India. The scam essentially works like this: you get befriended my a nice Indian man (or two) who offers you fantastic hospitality at no cost to you (perhaps free beers or dinners or tours of the city). When they have you were they want you, they will bring up a business proposition that has you agreeing to carry a bagful of precious stones back to your country where you will meet with a gem person, sell the bagful of gems you have been toting, and get a stake in the profit. First you will need to leave some money for “good faith” since presumably you will have hundreds of thousands of gems. The scam is that these gems are worthless, and the money you put down in good faith, is never returned to you. I knew about this scam before traveling to Jaipur so I was prepared. What I
wasn’t prepared for was how slick the operators really are. In my case, I met two brothers,
Samir and
Sabir.
Sabir had an “official” tourist car, and he and his younger brother split driving duties. They never brought up costs, they treated me to
chais (tea), they even invited e to attend their family
Eid celebration. I was hooked on this family. But then they introduced me to their friend and boss, Tony Ali. This was what he called himself at least. Tony lived in a house the size of an India city block. He spoke six languages flawlessly. His family, he said, was in the jewelry trade and had been for years. He also owned a disco and some hotels.
Wouldn’t I like a VIP-treated night at his disco.
Wouldn’t I like some whiskey? After I said “no” a few dozen different ways, he finally said, “I have a business proposition.” Here it came. He was going to try to scam me. It clearly
wouldn’t work as I was on to him. What did work, was that I got conned into thinking these twp brothers were nice and honest people. Maybe one of them is. But I know that the bond between Indian brothers means nothing goes unsaid and if one of them is working to find marks, the other is in on it too. So my scam story
doesn’t end in loss of money and fake rocks, but it ends with an abrupt severing to a once promising, albeit short, friendship. It felt awful. Not because I felt I had been "had", but because I started to feel cynical to other offers of hospitality. Here is where I have a choice: close up and don’t trust, or let myself be open on the chance I will meet another truly lovely person. Thankfully, I believe in taking chances.
