In the evening of Day 17, I got on another overnight bus, and 12 hours later was back in Delhi. The bus dropped me off at 5AM in the morning up in North Delhi, and immediately when you get off the bus with a massive backpack, you are swarmed by drivers and rickshaw drivers asking âauto rickshaw maâam? where you go? where you go?â. I have learnt to bat them away and ignore them until I have GPS coordinates of where I am going, and how far away it is, so I can negotiate the right price. That particular morning of Day 18, I had not slept at all, and was suddenly wary of auto-rickshaw drivers. I tried calling ahead to my hostel, and they told me the cost would be around 100R. The taxi drivers looked offended when I quoted that price, telling me it was early morning, and prices were different. I got them down from 800R to 500R, but gave in, because I just wanted to sleep. The receptionist at my hostel gave me a quiet earful for paying so much, but I didnât care by that point. In place like Delhi, where there are not functioning metres, you eventually just get tired from fighting. It is also important to switch your thinking from âWestern Pricesâ to âIndian Pricesâ. A 20 minute taxi at 5AM in the UK, would cost a lot more than ÂŁ5, but it was about five times what I should have paid. Allowing that happens, makes people continue to rip off tourists, because who wouldnât jump at the chance to make 5 times your normal amount for a short trip?
And so we nicely segue to whiteness in India. I have quickly learned that being a white woman in India is to get attention. I walk down the street, and I get attention. I stand on a corner on my phone, and I get stares, and I sit in cafes or diners, and I get attention. The type and intensity of attention changes from place to place, some places it seems more curious, some places more friendly, some more predatory, but there is no way for me to blend in in India. Itâs alright. You get used to it, but it is definitely a mixed bag. Being white gives you two things, what I call âWhite Bonusâ and âWhite Pricesâ.
Letâs start with the White Bonus. In short, most of the time, I get treated really really well by service people. I think I have had maybe one or two poor service experiences, and one of them was at 1AM in the morning, in a random hotel on an overnight-bus pit-stop, and I think the waiter was high on something. When going out to resturants in Delhi with Indian friends, the waiters sometimes *literally* leap up to serve you. I get amazing service in very very fancy places, when I am in my baggy pants, and obviously havenât showered all that recently. Being white elevates me in society, and it is absolutely ridiculous, and honestly, makes me uncomfortable a lot of the time. Because I am not a Queen, or a Princess (however much I claim to be Queen), I am an unemployed graduate from a middle-class family, and have worked service for the last 3 years. I am nothing special.
Upon that day back in Delhi (Day 18, October 25th), I met up with Pulkit again, and we went to Grubfest, this massive food festival south of Delhi. There were fairy lights, and music playing, and the vibe of the place was amazing. We ordered burgers at this very very busy burger stand, and our burgers were late, as one would imagine. Honestly, we had someone appear and apologise to us every 3 minutes, each time I would try and say âdude, itâs completely fine, shit happensâ. When we did get the burgers, they gave us extra burger each and extra chips. And that was all basically because I am white. It got better, because then I went to the Absolut Vodka stand; they had âIndian Cocktailsâ, and I wanted to try an âAbsolut Chutneyâ. I went to the cash booth to buy a ticket, and they smiled and told me to have one on the house. This was a 300R cocktail. I regretted not trying to order two. Pulkit and I looked at each other, and were like âdid that genuinely just happen?â Maybe it was because I looked particularly cute that night, or they liked my scarf, but I am 99% sure it was because I was white.
There are a few factors here. One, it is you are viewed as an affluent person. It is inevitable. I worked minimum wage jobs in the UK, and I can still afford to live in hostels, hotels, and eat out at resturants and cafes several times a day. Some people understand the difference in the cost of living from here versus the UK, but most people just see you are people who are made of money. Also, as a tourist, people will consider you a guest to their country as a whole, and the Guest is God. People will do their best to make sure you are heading in the right direction. I have had more white-knights come to my aid than ever before, including people angerily making sure no one sits next to me on a predominately male bus. People get up from their chairs for me at chai stalls, despite my protests. You are a visitor, and a guest, and that is important. Also, you are also someone that is interesting, and something different, and people are genuinely curious as to who you are and where you come from? Whiteness is valorized. So many people have told me that I am âbeautifulâ, and it is a complicated mix of issues, from remanents of colonialism, the caste system, and the interplay of Indian and Western media (too much to unpick, and this post is already far far too long).
Then of course, you get the White Prices. A âspecial price, just for you my friend!â As a tourist, the worst side of India that you are in regular contact with, is the scamming; there are far far worse parts, but as a tourist you are sheltered from experiencing that. So far, I have remained relatively unscathed. I have had double prices for rickshaws charged for me, and lost 300-500R, I have lost my phone (but that was entirely my idiocy) but no suffered no major scam. I have had people try, but thankfully reckonised it, and batted them away. Iâve heard stories though. Some travellers land in India, exhausted after 14-20+ hours of travelling, and cannot find their driver who was meant to meet them. They then can get taken from one âofficial tourist bureauâ to the next, and are told âThere is a strike onâ, or âAll the roads are closedâ, âthere are no hotels available, only this particular oneâ, often at several thousand rupees per night. These people will call up other hotels, often friends, involved in the scams, and they will tell them that there is no place to stay. I have met tourists who were moved around for 3 hours through Delhi until eventually finding a place to stay. It is a terrifying and awful start to a country, and I can understand how tourists get jaded and wary of Indian that they meet.
I havenât even mentioned selfies here yet. Selfies are a big thing in India, and I have had probably more than 50+ people or groups ask me for a selfie by this stage. I almost always say yes, apart from requests by young men (mostly because I donât know what they will do with that picture, and I donât want them putting it on Facebook and them declaring I am their girlfriend. Buy me dinner first). Sometimes there are families, or young women, and they come up and shyly ask, and it is a bit ridiculous and wonderful, but I smile anyway. The places worse for selfies are places where there is a lot of Indian tourists visiting, like the Golden Temple in Amritsar, or Haji Ali Dargh in Mumbai, but they happen all over the place. Mostly they are fine, we all smile at each other, I use my poor Hindi (Namaste, mera naam Lily, aap kese ho?) much to everyoneâs joy.
However few days ago I was exhausted and standing by the road near Haji Ali, trying to work out what I was doing next and barely functional. Within 5 minutes, 3 groups of people ask me for selfies, and one particular group of women didnât even ask. They walked past, and noticed me, and started speaking to each other, and then stood right next to me, and took their pictures. They didnât make eye contact, they didnât gesture with their phone, I understand that English is not always widespread, but you can communicate a fair amount with gestures and smiles and nods. These woman just stood next to me, and I smiled because I was too exhausted to do anything else. I felt like some kind of exotic animal, that people wanted to take pictures with, and not like a person whatsoever. It has been a mostly isolated incident, but it was dehumanising, and unpleasant, and nicely illustrates the way I am seen sometimes.
Sometimes it is exhausting to be the thing that everyone is outwardly staring at. People do not mean any harm by it, but if you are having an anxious day, there is no way to hide. Blending in is something I have never appreciated more. My best friend in the UK is mixed-race (hi Moogs, u smell). Sheâs half-Indian, but could pass as Turkish, Palestinian, Mexican, Spanish, or Iranian. She has had people come up to her and tentatively ask âAre you Iranian?â And when they are obviously Iranian, Kurdish, or Palestian themselves, it is them reaching out to her, to be like âHi, You may be like me?â. Having lived in predominantly white places, I have never *personally* understood that, or felt that. If you are white, ask yourself, have I ever been in a large room of people and been the only person of my ethnicity? Before coming to India, it likely never happened to me. Now, if I avoid tourist traps, it is very commonplace. And now, I can understand that reaching-out. You want someone who speaks your language, may understand your cultural references, and the place you are from; particularly as India is so different in so many ways. Itâs awkward as I feel like I should be embracing and immersing myself in Indian culture, but sometimes you just bloody miss home.
A final point. The difference from being white in India, versus brown in the UK is worth noting. The worst thing that people assume about me is that I am filthy rich, someone to be scammed, or sometimes, sexually promiscuous (nothing wrong with being promiscuous of course, but having people *assume* that you will sleep with them at the drop-of-the-hat is not pleasant). The âbeing-viewed-as-being-easyâ thing is more complicated, and Iâll get into it another time. However, In the UK, if you look South Asian, people will at best, ask you where you are from, and worst, people will be racially abusive, and think you are a terrorist. I am not going to pretend that I know what that is like, but I am willing to be that it is far worse than the hassle I get. Sometimes, it is exhausting being a solo-white-female-traveller, and Lord, what I would do to blend in sometimes. But even here, I am privileged and mostly protected by my skin colour, and I reckonise that, and acknowledge that, and near 6 weeks in, I have began to get used to all the weird shit that happens around me.
That was probably too long, you can tell this has been on my mind muchly.
All my love, from a cafe in Mumbai, watching the sunset over Girgaum Chowpatty.Â
