Esther Dalseno's Blog - Posts Tagged "india"
We Need To Talk About India
Other versions of this article have appeared on websites prior to this publication.
It had everything to do with The Life of Pi and an airline special, and little to do with reality. Sure, what did a 40 degree celsius heatwave matter? I was going to India. And being stubborn and somewhat fanciful, fantasizing about bazaars filled with jewellery and brightly hued silks, where men and women danced in the streets, where I could smoke hookah and drink Darjeeling tea and shoot the breeze with the locals with their cute little bobble-headed nods, I forged forward. And was sorely mistaken.
A family inside the labyrinths of Rock Temple, Trichy
The Life of Pi is my favorite novel. I lie, it's not my favorite (my favorite is a secret - kind of embarrassing) but it is, in my opinion, the best written book I've ever read. I would die to
be able to craft work like Yann Martel. I was so taken with The Life of Pi that I was determined to scout out the famous locations in the book: in a word, the seaside town of Pondicherry. I wanted to inhale the aroma of wild hibiscus in the Royal Botanical Gardens. I wanted to visit the public pools of Piscine and his uncle, and the zoo that contained every animal in the world. And this is why my travel buddy and I abandoned the tourist trail to the Taj Mahal or the white shores of Goa, and went down south. The deep south of India.
We flew into Trichy (Tirichurappalli) in the province of Tamil Nadu sometime around midday. I'm a tough girl who can handle revolting tampon-strewn and unflushed squat toilets, even my dog's vomit; my stomach is strong. However, the stench of the streets was like nothing I'd ever imagined, and I dry-heaved all the way to the hotel. It was like centuries of sunbaked urine layered upon centuries of sun-scorched urine. After checking out about a dozen hotels and guest houses in the paralyzing heat with all our baggage (travel buddy insisted - he was annoying like that), we settled on the classiest one in Trichy, merely because its cleanliness was sub-par (the highest standard available at the time), and I did not want to leave India with some sort of lice infestation.
Don't get me wrong - some of the sights were cool - the labyrinthian Rock Temple, and Ranganathaswamy, the largest Hindu temple in the country - although pickpockets were running rampant and were, thankfully, very obvious about their intentions. However, the hotel staff horrifed me. Whenever I addressed a staff member (all male), they would slam down their papers/files/mobile phones and glare at me. I would physically recoil. They would respond to my travel buddy, a male, with the answer to whatever question I'd been asking, like I was never there. On every
The author on the women's only section of a bus, Trichy
occasion I tried to converse with a hotel employee, the same occurred. And whenever I'd order room service, the kitchen staff would slam down the phone. But when my travel buddy called back, they would reply with several "yes, sirs", and the food would be brought up pronto.
And if that wasn't bad enough, what lay outside was worse. Let's not get into detail, but I felt like a celebrity, because no matter how covered up I was - head, shoulders, knees and toes (literally), it felt like every man in Trichy was on E-alert and needed to have a good stare and a good grope if they could manage it. Never mind my clutching onto my travel buddy's arm for dear life whenever out in public. Even when we ate at high-end restaurants, the chefs and kitchen hands would stand at the window, cross their arms, and silently stare at me: not for a minute, but for long, unblinking periods of time - sometimes until we had finished our meals, if no other customers had arrived. It soon got to the point where I would spend my nights in the hotel room, and my travel buddy started arranging for us to leave India much sooner than planned.
Not much changed in Pondicherry, but the wonders in my imagination were nothing to the sad, shrunken locations of reality. The harassment continued, and this time, small cars packed with at least 10 men would stop on the street and reverse, until they were slowly driving beside me, waving their arms and shouting. I felt uncomfortable and unsafe, and that drowned out the beauty of the seaside, the French-colonial streets and architecture, and the mysterious Sri Aurobindo Ashram, home of The Mother, a mystic with an enormous following, hiding in their midst the largest "magic" crystal in the world.
But I began thinking about the women of India, especially in light of the "Pink Panties" movement, a group of feminist locals joining forces over Facebook in protest against the Ram Sena, an activist anti-feminist group known to attack women and wishing to impose Taleban-like values upon Indian society. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7880377.stm
And when I arrived home, disappointed, shell shocked, dirty and broke, I was lost. Visiting a country has never had that affect on me before. I did not mind wading through six inches of excrement in a road-side bathroom. I did not care when the bus broke down and we had to wait six hours for someone to walk to the nearest village and return with a
tire. Facing a roadtrip squashed up against some farmers and their chickens did not bother me. And I did not break down (by some strength I never knew I had) when, about to finally depart at the airport, yet another altercation with a man occurred, and my travel buddy almost lost the plot. "We are finally about to leave, E," he hissed, his eyes misting over and his face turning red, "and I just know that if I attack this guy, they're going to lock me up or something. Let's just focus on getting out." And there we stood, exercising other-worldly self control, for over an hour waiting to board, as this man harassed us. I still remember his face. But all this did not affect me as much as one, solitary incident:
We were having lunch at a Lonely Planet recommended eatery. The food was good (food in India is not like our western version of it, it's got about ten times the spice - delicious on the way in but burny on the way out), the service adequate. But as we walked back to the hotel, my travel buddy turned to me and said: "I didn't want to scare you in there, but someone was watching you the entire time you were eating."
"Oh my God, not again," I responded, and my heart raced.
"I didn't want to tell you, because they were about three inches away from your face. And it would have scared the shit out of you."
The booth where we sat was next to a wall. A tiny glass window that led to the kitchen was situated right next to me. And I didn't even notice it.
"A young girl was in that window," continued my travel buddy, "and she stared at you from the moment you sat down."
"What do you think she wanted?"
"It was intense, as though she wanted your life. She looked at you like you were free."
And to this day, when I remember India, it is her I think about. Because I am free to whine, free to judge, free to blog on and on about whatever country I choose. So I got harassed in a patriarchal foreign country - big deal. I can just leave, which I did. But I don't have to stress about getting beaten up for drinking in a bar. Or for wearing non-conservative clothing. Or worry that my father would refuse to educate me, because he needed me to work underage at a Lonely Planet recommended eatery, where I would stare at western girls and wish I had their lives.
And that is why we need to talk about India.
lovers on Pondicherry beach
It had everything to do with The Life of Pi and an airline special, and little to do with reality. Sure, what did a 40 degree celsius heatwave matter? I was going to India. And being stubborn and somewhat fanciful, fantasizing about bazaars filled with jewellery and brightly hued silks, where men and women danced in the streets, where I could smoke hookah and drink Darjeeling tea and shoot the breeze with the locals with their cute little bobble-headed nods, I forged forward. And was sorely mistaken.
A family inside the labyrinths of Rock Temple, Trichy
The Life of Pi is my favorite novel. I lie, it's not my favorite (my favorite is a secret - kind of embarrassing) but it is, in my opinion, the best written book I've ever read. I would die to
be able to craft work like Yann Martel. I was so taken with The Life of Pi that I was determined to scout out the famous locations in the book: in a word, the seaside town of Pondicherry. I wanted to inhale the aroma of wild hibiscus in the Royal Botanical Gardens. I wanted to visit the public pools of Piscine and his uncle, and the zoo that contained every animal in the world. And this is why my travel buddy and I abandoned the tourist trail to the Taj Mahal or the white shores of Goa, and went down south. The deep south of India.We flew into Trichy (Tirichurappalli) in the province of Tamil Nadu sometime around midday. I'm a tough girl who can handle revolting tampon-strewn and unflushed squat toilets, even my dog's vomit; my stomach is strong. However, the stench of the streets was like nothing I'd ever imagined, and I dry-heaved all the way to the hotel. It was like centuries of sunbaked urine layered upon centuries of sun-scorched urine. After checking out about a dozen hotels and guest houses in the paralyzing heat with all our baggage (travel buddy insisted - he was annoying like that), we settled on the classiest one in Trichy, merely because its cleanliness was sub-par (the highest standard available at the time), and I did not want to leave India with some sort of lice infestation.
Don't get me wrong - some of the sights were cool - the labyrinthian Rock Temple, and Ranganathaswamy, the largest Hindu temple in the country - although pickpockets were running rampant and were, thankfully, very obvious about their intentions. However, the hotel staff horrifed me. Whenever I addressed a staff member (all male), they would slam down their papers/files/mobile phones and glare at me. I would physically recoil. They would respond to my travel buddy, a male, with the answer to whatever question I'd been asking, like I was never there. On every
The author on the women's only section of a bus, Trichyoccasion I tried to converse with a hotel employee, the same occurred. And whenever I'd order room service, the kitchen staff would slam down the phone. But when my travel buddy called back, they would reply with several "yes, sirs", and the food would be brought up pronto.
And if that wasn't bad enough, what lay outside was worse. Let's not get into detail, but I felt like a celebrity, because no matter how covered up I was - head, shoulders, knees and toes (literally), it felt like every man in Trichy was on E-alert and needed to have a good stare and a good grope if they could manage it. Never mind my clutching onto my travel buddy's arm for dear life whenever out in public. Even when we ate at high-end restaurants, the chefs and kitchen hands would stand at the window, cross their arms, and silently stare at me: not for a minute, but for long, unblinking periods of time - sometimes until we had finished our meals, if no other customers had arrived. It soon got to the point where I would spend my nights in the hotel room, and my travel buddy started arranging for us to leave India much sooner than planned.
Not much changed in Pondicherry, but the wonders in my imagination were nothing to the sad, shrunken locations of reality. The harassment continued, and this time, small cars packed with at least 10 men would stop on the street and reverse, until they were slowly driving beside me, waving their arms and shouting. I felt uncomfortable and unsafe, and that drowned out the beauty of the seaside, the French-colonial streets and architecture, and the mysterious Sri Aurobindo Ashram, home of The Mother, a mystic with an enormous following, hiding in their midst the largest "magic" crystal in the world.
But I began thinking about the women of India, especially in light of the "Pink Panties" movement, a group of feminist locals joining forces over Facebook in protest against the Ram Sena, an activist anti-feminist group known to attack women and wishing to impose Taleban-like values upon Indian society. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7880377.stm
And when I arrived home, disappointed, shell shocked, dirty and broke, I was lost. Visiting a country has never had that affect on me before. I did not mind wading through six inches of excrement in a road-side bathroom. I did not care when the bus broke down and we had to wait six hours for someone to walk to the nearest village and return with a
tire. Facing a roadtrip squashed up against some farmers and their chickens did not bother me. And I did not break down (by some strength I never knew I had) when, about to finally depart at the airport, yet another altercation with a man occurred, and my travel buddy almost lost the plot. "We are finally about to leave, E," he hissed, his eyes misting over and his face turning red, "and I just know that if I attack this guy, they're going to lock me up or something. Let's just focus on getting out." And there we stood, exercising other-worldly self control, for over an hour waiting to board, as this man harassed us. I still remember his face. But all this did not affect me as much as one, solitary incident:We were having lunch at a Lonely Planet recommended eatery. The food was good (food in India is not like our western version of it, it's got about ten times the spice - delicious on the way in but burny on the way out), the service adequate. But as we walked back to the hotel, my travel buddy turned to me and said: "I didn't want to scare you in there, but someone was watching you the entire time you were eating."
"Oh my God, not again," I responded, and my heart raced.
"I didn't want to tell you, because they were about three inches away from your face. And it would have scared the shit out of you."
The booth where we sat was next to a wall. A tiny glass window that led to the kitchen was situated right next to me. And I didn't even notice it.
"A young girl was in that window," continued my travel buddy, "and she stared at you from the moment you sat down."
"What do you think she wanted?"
"It was intense, as though she wanted your life. She looked at you like you were free."
And to this day, when I remember India, it is her I think about. Because I am free to whine, free to judge, free to blog on and on about whatever country I choose. So I got harassed in a patriarchal foreign country - big deal. I can just leave, which I did. But I don't have to stress about getting beaten up for drinking in a bar. Or for wearing non-conservative clothing. Or worry that my father would refuse to educate me, because he needed me to work underage at a Lonely Planet recommended eatery, where I would stare at western girls and wish I had their lives.
And that is why we need to talk about India.
lovers on Pondicherry beach
