October 28, 2012

"Can I Touch Her?"

(First: We're a little behind with our recaps, and we'll get those up on the blog soon. In the meantime, we don't want to keep going back in time to write, so we're going to share some of our current travels with you while, at the same time, interspersing some posts from travels a few weeks ago…I hope it doesn't get confusing! This post is about something that just happened.)

One of the most difficult things I've dealt with (probably THE most difficult, actually), has been the unwelcome stares from Indian men. Staring is something we're used to. Everyone stares at us. Kids giggle. Boys point out how tall Tom is. Women carefully inspect our faces. Men look over their shoulders to get another glimpse of us. Sometimes, as we're passing by someone, they'll ask, mid-stride, what country we're from. We'll answer "America…California" and they'll repeat "America!" and, sometimes, "Obama!" which is really fun. They want to take our picture and shake our hands. It's mostly nice. We are, however, almost always on display. In truth, I don't think we were prepared for how few foreigners we would encounter on this trip. Not only are there not a lot of us, but there are a LOT of Indians, so we barely dilute the population. Sometimes, we go days without seeing another foreigner. This means that many locals, especially if they're visiting a city from more rural parts of the country, have had very little, if any, interaction with someone who looks like us. The staring is almost always good-natured and soon followed by a smile. It doesn't bother us in the least, and we do our best to make a favorable impression on behalf of Westerners everywhere. (You're welcome!)

Tom with some new, random friends
 I'm very careful to dress respectfully. Women here almost always have their shoulders, chests, and knees covered and some Muslim women even wear the full burqa. While some foreign women will wear tank tops out in a village or city, I have never done so. I always wear loose-fitting pants and a conservative top or a long, flowy maxi dress, and I always have a scarf around my chest and shoulders and Tom and I are careful not to show a lot of affection to each other in public (we don't even hold hands). We try really hard to not only respect this culture, but to try to become a part of it. But still, I get the unwanted, appraising stares from men and the occasional "accidental" brush against when in a crowd. This is nearly impossible to avoid, as there are people everywhere and there is an entirely different sense of personal space here than we have at home.
This is me, all respectably-dressed on a normal day.
Ignore the busted-up rickshaw...details to come in another post.
This really isn't a harsh criticism of India (I'm realizing it might sound that way), as I merrily accept that, because I'm inserting myself into a very different culture, I have to take the bad/uncomfortable with the good/amazing. I signed up for this, and it's all a LOT more good than it is bad. And also, I'm never really in any danger - Tom's always with me and the looks aren't so dissimilar to the looks you may have once hoped to receive from a guy in a bar back home. And we all have examples where men (people, really) have behaved like pigs towards women at home. I really only have the experience more often here because I'm different and because we encounter so many people on a normal day. (If 1 in every 1000 men is a sleaze ball, then you're likely to run into one every week or so at home. Here, where I'm in close quarters with thousands of people each day, I might run into 4 or 5 a day.) I'm really only setting the stage for something interesting that happened the other day when we were in Mysore - our first stop in the state of Karnataka, and our first city (more on Mysore later).

We were visiting Mysore during Dasara, the biggest holiday and festival in the area and had been dealing with the excessive crowds for several exhausting days. Because the festival is so big, people come in from smaller towns and villages from all over. This makes for a great, excited atmosphere, but also means….more unwelcome, unpleasant staring and invasions of personal space. Over the course of a few days, I had grown weary of the staring and had, more than once, had to deal with a man in a crowd "accidentally" grabbing my ass. Not only was this infuriating to me, it was really difficult for Tom, as I made him promise not to get angry or aggressive. Instead, I just give the pervert an angry look back for the staring or a verbal smackdown for the grabbing. It always works and they look appropriately ashamed. Crisis averted.

One day in Mysore, our rickshaw driver took us to an aromatherapy shop in a back alley of one of the Muslim neighborhoods. (Side note: The Muslim neighborhoods were where I was treated with the MOST respect. I received fewer unfriendly stares and was never touched.) His friend, Zabib, was the proprietor of the shop and quickly started telling us about different oils and their uses. After holding a few up for us to smell, he put some oil (used to treat colds, which we both have) on his fingers and approached me, intending to rub a bit of the oil under my nose to clear my sinuses. Before he did so, he turned to Tom and asked, "Can I touch her?" It caught us both so off guard that I said nothing and Tom said, "Yea, that's fine." I was so grateful that he asked (and didn't just invade my personal space) that it didn't even occur to me for several seconds that I should be offended that he asked Tom and not me. Tom later said that he wished his response had been, "Thank you for asking, but you'll need to ask her." Zabib was very intelligent, respectful and helpful (we purchased 2 different oils from him), and I really enjoyed spending time with him. I'm still not offended by his question to Tom because I know that he asked it as a show of respect to both of us. But the more I think about it, the more I realize what a different place we are in.

And I can't believe that we're here.


Tom and the respectful Zabib in his aromatherapy shop


8 comments:

  1. This made me laugh! I'd love to know what he would have said if Tom would have said what he wished he had! And thank you, really, for going out of your way to make a favorable impression! The down side to being in a foreign country with a lot of other Americans...not all of us have the sense to behave ourselves!

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    1. Jen! I can't wait to read about your adventures in Seoul! I wish Korea was on our list for this trip!

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  2. Next time order for Tom, just to see what happens. Miss you two!

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    1. Miss you a jillion times...can you please be on skype all the time so I can talk to you? I want to see your Gnome-y face!

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  3. Fun times. India is another world that just must be accepted on its own terms. I've lived there, working, for 5 months in Bangalor with Sue. Beautiful people but there is a clash of cultures there. We travelled with a couple of other friends and the locals called us "Mixed vegetables" since we were one asian, two tall white guys and a brown girl that was from Sri Lanka. Funny times. Do they ask you if your marriage is a "love marriage" (i.e. not an arranged marriage)? Great term. Woman are treated differently however and there's just no way around it. But it is always meant in a respectful way we found.

    Glad to see you're enjoying India. Are you going north? Don't miss the Golden Temple and the daily border closing ceremonies. worth the trip.

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    1. Definitely just best to accept the differences (and even appreciate them). No one has asked us if our marriage is a "love marriage," but several people have asked if we dated people before we met. We're headed north at the end of this month. We have a wedding in Delhi at the end of November, then hope to explore Varanasi, Rajasthan and maybe Kashmir before we leave around the end of January.

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  4. Just catching up on my RSS feeds and enjoyed this the most out of your latest 8 blogs; my wife EmSue is definitely getting more looks than me here in Bombay and we have only been here 4 days so I can see how this can wear on you.

    Any chance y'all are heading north before the end of November? Would be great to grab dinner together sometime. We are in Bombay / Mumbai until the 14th or so and then heading north making our way to Delhi, our visa expires at the beginning of December but if it works out it will be great.

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    1. Hey Dustin! Welcome to India! We're still in Hampi now and will probably be in Goa for the next few weeks. Then we'll spend a few days in Mumbai around November 24 or so before we fly to Delhi on November 27. We'll be in the Delhi area for a wedding until December and then will spend time in Rajasthan, Agra, and maybe Kashmir. Looks like we'll miss each other! We're off to SE Asia sometime around the end of January.

      Good luck to EmSue re: the staring. It's really difficult at times. After you get more comfortable, I've found the best thing to do is let them know the staring is unwelcome. (It doesn't bother me when it's just a curious stare...it's the "undressing me with their eyes stare" that I really can't manage.

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