If you pay peanuts,....

...you get monkeys.

NO. You attracts fine

Sometime in 1981, my wife and I were on a train from Madras to Calcutta. We were at that time fairly paranoid about world war three, the end of the US dollar(yep we were well ahead of our time!) so carried most of our money in gold Kruggerands , some sewn into clothes some sewn into wifes bra !!It was so hot and humid that as the journey progressed, all the gold studded clothing ended up getting stripped off and put into a shoulder bag. As we approached the station in Calcutta swarms of coolies and general hustlers boarded, and there was quite a bit of chaos.As I went to help my wife put on her backpack, the super valuable shoulder bag just vanished! So, suddenly experiencing the plight of the poor, I behaved like a chicken with its head chopped off, and ran the length of the platform and back in a futile search for the Police
with the naive expectation that they were there to protect the public.
My wife meanwhile had been befriended by a Bengali chap, who announced to all and sundry that the two foreigners were willing to pay 200RS(worth a lot more then than now) reward to whoever helped recover their bag.Little boys scampered off in all directions, and very soon came back with our bag which had been taken by a boy aged about 8-9 who had been hiding in the toilet.Se you can imagine the relief we felt being reunited with our passports and if I remember right 6 ounces of Kruggerands and about 8 british sovereigns.I was in a hurry to pay the little boy his 200 rupees when to our surprise the old Bengali bloke turned strict schoolteacher and sternly rebuked the little boy, and told him he was not going to get his 200 rupees. I have always regretted that as I think it might have helped other people get their stuff back if we had not given the thief an example of being dishonest. We went on to get married in Calcutta, so the place does not hold bad memories for me!