They carry suitcases. His message is reinforced by the airport billboards, most of which try to link an Indian product to America. Americans kick ass, the ads remind, are the baddest, the richest, have the best technology and the most sex, and are much admired for setting a can-do example. Speeding out of the airport, a hired car dodges foraging street dogs.
Stray dogs are as ubiquitous as people sleeping on streets.
Both are widely seen as signs of not measuring up to the supposedly superior U.S. standard. Yet a closer look could give an American humanitarian an inferiority complex. Few Bombay street dogs are pregnant, or nursing, or have puppies. Far from starving, many seem almost prosperous. There are no stray cats in sight.