After many months in India I stumbled on my preferred method:
- say nothing
- give the palms together Indian greeting to the person asking as in the image below (they will almost always respond in kind)
- continue with what I was doing
I do like that this is a bit more respectful to the other person. However, the main advantage is that when I just ignored the person begging they would often continue following me and asking. Every time I tried the above method they always moved on. Works like magic.
