I am one of many thousands of victims of Delhi's most imaginative tourist scam – even though I've lived in the city for many years and really should have known better. I have now been outsmarted four times by the phantom shit squirter of Connaught Place, and my memories of each occasion make me feel a little foolish. The crime scene in question, Connaught Place, is in the heart of New Delhi and was built by the British in the dying years of the empire, as the city's commercial and shopping district. And although its curving colonnades are less favoured by the modern citizens of Delhi, who flock to huge new air-conditioned shopping malls, they continue to draw large numbers of gullible foreign visitors.
I first became aware of the phantom squirter 11 years ago. I was emerging from an underpass in Connaught Place when a shoeshine man came up to me, and whispered into my ear the word "shit". He then pointed at my right shoe on which sat, to my amazement, a small slug of brownish goo. He offered to wipe it off, in return for 100 rupees – but I suspected something was, well, afoot, and I cleaned it with a few leaves. Some months later it happened again and I had a minor altercation with the shoeshine man. One day, I decided I'd photograph the person who had squirted my shoe. But I was daydreaming as I wandered through the underpass – and was squirted again. This time, I'm embarrassed to say, I became incandescent with rage. To the consternation of passers by, and to my everlasting shame, I grabbed the man and rubbed the filth off my shoe on to his trousers.
I soon became obsessed by the shit squirter. I began researching the history of the scam. There are dozens of accounts on the internet, and several acquaintances had similar stories. The scam goes back many years. Only foreigners get squirted, it seems, and only those wearing closed shoes. I returned several times to the underpass, but to my great disappointment my shoes remained spotlessly clean. I wanted to find out the scam artist's life story. How much money did he make on a good day? Had he ever been caught? What are the mechanics of squirting, how does he get such a neat worm of shit on to a passing shoe? And what does he tell his family he does for a living?
As I began to write about the city, I realised the shit squirter scam was an archetypal Delhi story. An example of jugaad, the Hindi word that describes that spirit of ingenuity and improvisation in the face of adversity on which the city prides itself. The scam is undoubtedly irritating for tourists, but is hardly life-threatening – and presumably provides an income for a poor family. And the presence of the squirter is a sign that Connaught Place , for all its recently restored 1930s charm, really is a tourist trap, in a city which is so under-explored by its many visitors. A large number of tourists fail to do much more than visit the Red Fort and shop in Connaught Place – and so, often beset by hawkers and beggars and scamsters, have an entirely different experience of the capital from more adventurous travellers.
Historically, Delhi is one of the world's great cities, containing an astonishing array of forts, tombs, mosques and government buildings constructed over the past 1,000 years. It is also a brashly intimidating modern megacity, with more than 15 million inhabitants – and many first-time visitors find it all a bit daunting. But it has a gently addictive quality, and deserves to be explored slowly, and for anybody who is interested in architecture and history it is one of the most remarkable cities in the world.
Hemmed in by high-rises, just to the south of Connaught Place, less than 1km from the shit squirter's underpass, is a superb 14th-century step well, known as Agarsen's Baoli. I have never seen another foreigner there on my many visits – and the chances of being scammed at the step must be close to zero.
South Delhi is a cornucopia of minor ruins – an official guide lists hundreds of them – that can be a source of delight to anyone who casually wanders its streets. In my neighbourhood, Panchsheel Park, there are several unlisted and unprotected buildings that anywhere else in the world would be major tourist attractions. One, a ruined three-storey cathedral-like building hidden deep in one of the city's many surviving patches of wilderness, was recently identified as a 14th-century palace. The nearby mosque from the same period was bulldozed to make way for the construction of squash and badminton courts for the Commonwealth Games taking place in Delhi in October.
Preparations for the games have spurred on development, for better and for worse. The tourist infrastructure has improved. Many ancient and modern buildings have been given a facelift; the first cycle lanes have appeared. The famously terrible buses have improved. Delhi's metro – one of the most modern in the world – will reach South Delhi by September, and provide easier access to many major and minor historical sites. It is, visibly, a city on the move.
Last year, I resumed my search for the shit squirter of Connaught Place. I went back to the underpass, wearing my shiniest black shoes – but nothing happened. I did an internet search, to check the squirter had not gone to ground – and, yes, there were several more reports from angry victims. Then as I prepared to leave Delhi for a holiday, I made a final attempt to find the phantom. I walked through the underpass, but nothing happened. I was then strolling in a nearby park when a shoeshine man came up to me and pointed to my shoe. There it was – I'd been caught again. I turned to the shoeshine man. I explained in Hindi that I was not angry, that I wanted to meet his accomplice and I even offered him money. He ran away – without the money – as fast as his legs would go.
That is almost the end of the shit squirter story, except I was able to find out a little more about the history of the scam, and its possible British origins. After I appeared on BBC radio's From Our Own Correspondent talking about the squirter, I received dozens of emails from listeners. Many were simply victims of the same scam which, from their evidence, goes back to at least the 1960s. But I also heard about older versions of the scam, in Cairo during the Second World War, and most unexpectedly in a book published in 1948, The Otterbury Incident by Cecil Day-Lewis. There is one scene in which boys hidden in a cellar use flit guns to spray the shoes of passers-by with muddy water. Two other boys are waiting a little way off, next to a sign reading "SHOE-SHINE – 3d". Flit guns were a household device for spraying insecticide – and they're still used in India. I now think I know how the phantom squirter of Connaught Place manages to get the shit on to the shoe – but I am still to hear his full story.
Sam Miller's Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity is published by Vintage, £8.99
