chartandwaters

It's possible to blow your nose without any sort of tissue or handkerchief. You squeeze your nostils a little to provide direction and lean over to protect your clothes. It is normal to do this in public so long as you do it outside or over a sink.

But I can't do it, of course, and although shopkeepers directed me to a store that is known for selling tissue, it was too far, so I bought a bunch of the standard inexpensive restaurant napkins--small and thin and slightly corrugated, they come in pastel colors--for 5 Rupees. These napkins are of extremely fragile paper and begin to disintegrate when they experience the least friction, so they give the impression of disappearing in your hands. But you can blow your nose into them. I had a cold last week and sat at the computer station blowing my nose one napkin after the other. Not a honking noise, just an I have a big cold noise. The first time I blew my nos, a polite, very decent-looking couple sitting at the next computer turned to see what the noise was. They smiled self-consciously at my being a foreigner and making funny noises. Each time I blew my nose after that, they were also startled,and looked up and over at me, remembered what the noise was and grinned a bit as if I were doing something embarrassing.