•Shailaja Bajpai: Tell us three things that you found really difficult in your journey of walk. There are no pavements in Delhi.

Sam Miller: Generally, three times my auto rickshaws was hit, never very badly though. I fell into a dry manhole once down the airport road. Fortunately, it was not very deep and was being constructed then. I fell into one of the few dry manholes in Delhi! I was also chased by pigs, which I thought funny initially but then a woman at a dhaba told me that a child was mauled to death by pigs in Samaipur Badli. And I was very much near there!

I never felt threatened in Delhi. I feel I am incredibly welcome in most places. I must have cut a pretty odd figure, because I was not only a foreigner, but a foreigner on foot! Right at the beginning of my book, I tell a story about the shit squirted on my shoe, which is like a scam! I am still waiting to be contradicted on it because I have never met a single Indian to whom this has happened but this has happened to half of the foreigners on one point or the other.There is a subway near Regal Cinema and there is this scam when basically when someone, as you go across, squirts a bit of shit on your shoes. And you come up, there is a shoe shining man, pointing at your shoes and charging you a huge sum of money. And the scam can go further, as some persons have described how the shoe shining man armed with a small razor blade can cut the shoes and would tell you that your shoes need to be stitched up. The scam has gone on and on. But on the whole, the fact of me being a foreigner was a help in a way and it was easy for me because I spanned out so much. We all know for women, Delhi is quite a dangerous place and we read about it everyday. There was one occasion when I felt threatened. It was near the old slaughter house, west of Sadar Bazar. It was around 7 am and I was coming back after seeing off my kids at New Delhi Railway Station. As I walked, I saw this incredible scene of butchery that I cannot quite imagine and I just walked around in a daze because it was like a sort of medieval painting. I talked to some of the butchers and I went into a room where they were killing the cattle. They suddenly turned nasty and unpleasant on me and started joking as to how long it will take to skin me. They had knives. I got scared but I think I was wrong to be scared because they were just having a bit of fun. I picked my phone and rang my wife saying I am coming. Her number was busy and I had to make up a conversation! But they listened to me speaking in English and after that they stopped being menacing, and we all had a laugh then.

... contd.