Right at the starting gate, as soon as I set foot in Mysore Market (or I mean, Devarajah Market, the market in Mysore) Assan said hello to me. Or, he said "What country, sir?" As near to a hello as a body seems to get in India.

Everybody wants to know where you're from. "US" and "USA" are countries but usually produce a foggy follow-up: "USA ... America?" We Usonians come from a bureaucratic country, one properly named only by a three-letter acronym, like the UAE: it is a country of modern organizational convenience instead of an ancestral nation .

Assan asked what country, sir, and I told him what country, and then a small boy asked if I wanted to see him make incense. How could I not?

I followed him through the narrow market streets (its "overhead" tarps pitched at about 5'1") zigging and zagging, wondering if he would take me down some rabbithole next or if I'd soon be talking to Fagin & his orphan pickpockets. No: we ended at an incense and essential oils stall, numerous in the market as I would later find, and also peppered with a small sampling of those deliciously-colored cones of pigment powder that you'll have seen in Nat'l Geog'c or the like.

Imran, who owned this stall, ushered me right in to the booth to watch this boy smallno more 8 thanroll a stick of incense. "It's a very interesting process," Imran said, and I ate it up. The boy put two small piles of powder, sandalwood and something else on a wood board. He mixed them with his fingers, then someone appeared with a drop of water or oil, which was worked into the powder mix. Soon he had a dark-brown putty-like substance which I lolled merrily on my fingers. The boy (whose name, god bless me, I've sorrowly forgotten) found a stick and started rolling the stick in the paste, twisting it round and round the stick, and at first I thought he, an amateur, would make a sub-standard item: not the smooth apportionment of scent-on-a-stick we're used to (nag champa from your bodega) but some crumby glop of goo wrapped around a stick. But the boy was not bad: he rolled and rolled and got a smooth coating after all, while Imran talked to me of scents and incense. "He slow ismeaning boy the"There is a woman in Mysore," he says, "who makes 10,000 a day. Ten thousand a day!"

He showed me synthetic American incense, asked me smell toI have no nose for the difference, but he claimed the synthetic stuff goes stale faster. As a hippie, I'm lapsed at best, but I like a spot of incense now and then; it gives a nice smell.

Then Imran started in on the scents. All these tinctures in little glass jugs, glass-stoppered. The first one he showed me was Calvin Klein's Essence. (Him: "Do you know Calveen Klein?" Me: "Uh... yes." Him: "This is Essence, by Calveen Klein. He imports this and adds alcohol.") Here it went by the name of "Nine Fowers." Half an hour later, I was burdened by a small fortune's worth of essential oils: not enough to give gifts to the important people in my life, but too much to allow me to buy lunch the next day. Rp 200/- each, not seemingly a bargain but what could I do? I'd fotograffed his wee boy making incense!

I escaped with my life. I wandered the market, snapping old men in diapers selling plastic toys (a small minority here, mind you) and stacks of coconuts ready to go. Lovely flower smells came intervals atit's a flower market as much as a vegetable one, with a few of the incense/pigment/scent vendors.

Everyone in market theor at least the scent vendors, maybe not the garlic-and-ginger specialists or the guys coconuthave bound notebooks of their tourist customers, organized by country. I fell into one called "USA" (fancy that!) but Imran had about 20: Germany, France, Sweden, Turkey, . . . .

So many people ask "what country" that I try to answer and get on with things before a discussion can develop (the dilemma of whether to answer US, my home country, or UK, where I live, fell by the wayside last week, when an answer of "USA" gave me a more enthusiastic reply than I could ever imagine; UK is alright for these folks, I guess, but has certain Imperialist overtones, the Commonwealth notwithstanding). Many are quite happy with the simple answer of "What country?" (or in the case of well-educated schoolchildren, a more articulate "What is your native country, sir?") and don't press on, though a few will do, asking "Your good name, sir?" and more.

But at another scent stall I got waylaid. The guy had a certain charm. He asked "country WhatUSA, which produced a gleam contentedthen "What is your name?" and my answer, "Ezra," produced quite a frightful excitement in him. I worried he had the same misconception of my name as a couple of lads selling flowers a few minutes back: "Are you Muslim? It's a Muslim name, Wazziru." Then I worried more, because he said, "I think you met my brother when you came in." What sort of crazy pitch was this? I'd heard it all. And I couldn't afford any more essential oils. "My brother, Assan," he said. Oho! New game! Assan from the market entrance. "Assan came here some time back and said, 'I just met someone, called Ezra.' " I was suitably flattered. This, too, may well have been an elaborate sales game, by my man soon proved to be something better.

He saw the pink flower drawn on my hand by another pigment-vendor and cried, "Oh! Who did this? You know it will last for three months!" I was mildly shocked. "He didn't tell you?" "Really?" and "No..." were my nonplussed responses. He rushed to rub it off with a cotton ball and, indeed, it wasn't coming off. "You aren't worried?" he said. "Well, no," I said, which I wasn't. "Why not? It's pink." I bluffed: "You just have to be confident" (when meeting people with a pink flower on your hand, is what I meant). "You're not worried?? Three months!" "Really??" I asked, starting to get worried, and showing it. "No!" he said, "I'm kidding! I play this joke on everyone!" and I knew I liked him. In a land of so many bitter hustlers, this guy had a sense of humor. "I tell everyone this, like the French, I say 'trois mois'! [in a convincing French accent] and they say, 'Non!' " And so I met Neel. (Or whom I will call Neel.)

He wanted to know what I thought of Bush and why no American who he meets likes Bush (yes, well...), and how he got into office if no one likes him (long story, that).

We talked about the Mumbai attacks and more. Everyone is up in arms about that here: it has spurred a profound nationalism, uniting Indians against Pakistan. Some say India has been "soft on terror" and that this is what led to the attacks. I struggle not to translate this into American terms or think where such rhetoric led for the US.

I can't think now how it first came up, but Neel was hoping to write a book. I asked what about. It was hard to catch his answer, since he put it under his breath: it was about "homos" India ingay folks. Because, he said, many people can't talk about it, there are no books about it. It is still illegal here. I want to show what it is like; many people would read it because they can't speak about it, but they could buy the book. We talked a great deal more about this; he had met some American bloke with a connection to the publishing industry, who had encouraged him to be in touch. He invoked the holy name of Arundhati Roy: first-time author cum best-seller. I told him I thought his chances were good, that many in the West would want to read what the situation is like for gays in India. I was probably being a bit loud toohe cast furtive glances toward the neighboring sellers coconutbut I didn't use any specific terms and so held his cover.

Neel was appalled I'd paid Rs 200/- a vial for essential oils from Imran. He charges only 100/-! Every vendor in the Mysore Market seemed to have another story that layers on top of what came before. It seemed to be a maze of personalities: either a very human community where people happen to be trading, or a very sophisticated soft sell, a place where vendors know just what they can get, how they can weave a story on top of one another to entrance buyers, without ever crossing the line to pushy. The state of Karnataka, I understand, lies on the fertile Deccan Plateau, sheltered from storms; people there are laid-back, unexcitable, apparently content. And the Mysore Market was the perfection of that pleasant atmosphere in a kind of trap touristbut I may have been the only there touristso downplayed as to seem like just a market.