"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