Earlier today, I read an article on Slate magazine online about the damage tourists do by contributing money or food to child beggars. (My colleague, Eric Johnson, took the accompanying photo!)

I already knew much of the information the article imparted. For example:

In India, roughly 60,000 children disappear each year, according to official statistics. (Some human rights groups estimate that the actual number is much higher than that.) Many of these children are kidnapped and forced to work as beggars for organized, mafia-like criminal groups. According to UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, and the U.S. State Department, these children aren’t allowed to keep their earnings or go to school, and are often starved so that they will look gaunt and cry, thereby eliciting more sympathy—and donations—from tourists. And since disabled child beggars get more money than healthy ones, criminal groups often increase their profits by cutting out a child’s eyes, scarring his face with acid, or amputating a limb.

We encounter beggars every time we leave the house. Some actually live in the medians near our neighborhood, taking shelter under the overpass. As soon as we stop at a red light, they descend. Some tap on our windows and gesture at their mouths or bellies, playing on our guilt. Some youngsters with drawn-on mustaches and other silly body paint perform flips or cartwheels, bang drums, sing and otherwise attempt to earn a few coins. Some sell individual flowers.

Usually the adults handle the intersection commerce. They drift through the captive cars, carrying stacks of books and magazines, phone chargers, toys, bouquets of flowers, steering wheel covers, balloons shaped like electric guitars, peacock feathers, tissue boxes and seasonal items, such as fireworks at Diwali or colorful powders at Holi.

We have had some amusing interactions with the street sellers. Once we were giving my friend Nancy a ride home on the last day of school after she had received two massive flower arrangements from students. She and I sat in the backseat, unable to see each other through the enormous bouquets. Stopped at an intersection, we pushed aside the flowers to look out the window. A flower seller leaned down to look in my car and rapped on the window. He gestured at Nancy’s flowers and then at his own with an expectant smile. We laughed and said, “Obviously we don’t need any flowers!” He tried repeatedly to convince us otherwise. Another time, a hawker sidled up to my car with a tower of tissue boxes. I responded to his window knock by holding up the TWO boxes of tissues we had in the car. Unfazed, he pointed out that Britney Spears was featured on his boxes. Sometimes it’s just too surreal.

Neither Nancy nor I have ever bought anything from the street sellers, although it’s frequently tempting as we sit, stuck in traffic, bored, watching the parade of hawkers.

“I’ve really been wanting one of the peacock-feather fans,” Nancy said. “But I’m scared to open the window. What if they all come running over to sell me stuff?”

Exactly.

This holiday afternoon, Nancy and I were heading home after lunch at a nearby restaurant when we stopped at a red light. A man selling books walked by, and Nancy spotted The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, most likely our next book club book.

“Isn’t that the book I need?” she asked.

“It is,” I answered, apathetically as I’ll buy it on my kindle.

“I’m gonna get it!” she said, rolling down the window.

By the time she had made the transaction, a young girl selling flowers came slinking over to my car. Excited to cross “buy something at a Delhi intersection” off her bucket list, Nancy didn’t close the window fast enough, and the girl tossed in a small cellophane-wrapped bouquet of three roses, which wedged between Nancy’s seat and the door. As Nancy fumbled around trying to find the flowers, the girl leaned on my car hood, staring at us with an expression of total contempt. Slowly, she lifted one windshield wiper up, making eye contact the entire time.

Nancy found the flowers and tried to hand them back to the girl through the open window. The girl ignored her, so Nancy flipped them onto the hood within her reach. Apparently the girl was fed up with noncompliant customers, so she waited – hip jutted out, insolent expression on her face – until just before the light turned green. And then she extended my other windshield wiper.

There was no time to jump out and push the wipers down. Other drivers were already honking at me. So off we went, like a ridiculous taupe metallic insect in this concrete jungle of Delhi, wobbly antennae leading the way.

I know it’s not politically correct to laugh about this, but Nancy and I were in hysterics. One minute, we feel oppressive expat guilt driving past the desperately poor children, half naked and dirty, begging for money. The next minute, that little girl – who really should be in school, probably fourth grade – dumps all her frustration on us, and we had to admit she was pretty badass. We were laughing at ourselves, with a tinge of disbelief, and sending some respect and hope out into the universe for that scrappy kid.