See how excited the schoolchildren are to see me?
Please excuse the blurriness of the above video – Aditya was filming me on the sly, pretending to take pictures of the massive Hindu temple we were visiting. He kept telling me to wave at the children, but at the time I was worried about their little arms falling off – they’d been waving at me nonstop for the past five minutes! Their teachers were a bit frantic, too, as my appearance had messed up the class picture.
If you’re white and traveling through India, you might occasionally cause this kind of commotion. Why? Because in India being white means you’re automatically a rock star, particularly in the more rural areas. A white person with long blond hair? A rock legend. Prepare to be mobbed.
It’s all meant in a good way, though***. Most of the time people are just excited to see a real, live white person, and maybe try out their English. Combine this unabashedly friendly attitude with a culture where it’s not considered rude to stare, and you get a trip where you’re the center of attention all day long. Immediately prior to the schoolchildren excitement, for example, I had posed in two pictures with a South Indian family – one with the kids, one with all the ladies of the family. I still wonder what the photo captions say in their family album.
Of course, it’s not just Indians who act this way around people who look differently. Somewhere there exists a white family with an album of their family trip to Niagara Falls. And in that album is a photograph of the family posing with a very lovely woman in a brightly colored sari. My mother-in-law is a rock star too. That’s just how we roll in this family.
***By “it all”, I’m referring to the attention you get from everyday people, not the attention you get from beggars, scammers, shop owners, and all the other people trying to get money from a white (aka rich) person. For more information about avoiding this sort of problem, try checking out the very helpful travel wiki on India. Don’t let the scammers keep you from meeting all the people who are just genuinely curious about you, though!
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March 30th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Gori’s have a rockstar image all over India,sometimes rivaling demigods, but its very disheartening to see is how Africans are treated in India. I still remember this famous incident where a Nigerian student,went to save the honor of an eve teased girl only to be beaten up by an angry mob.
Happens only in India !
March 30th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
to be perfectly fair, it happens all over the world… [the poor treatment of Africans]… While I’ve never heard of this story of the Nigerian student in India, I’ve heard plenty of similar stories in the US. Post 9/11 sikhs bore the brunt of misinformed anti-arab sentiment
April 1st, 2008 at 7:26 am
Somehow, not just a white but being an indian too in certain places add a variety of tastes from the cultural differences of the region. At first I have been mistaken as a wrong identity of being a foreigner though I do not have any such big differences.
If you travel this country from length to the breadth you will find yourself counted as a Rockstar at most of the places.
Happy blogging and .. this seems to be good way to start the interaction to the world.
Cheers
~m~
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:18 pm
@ 6mile: I agree with Aditya that you can find racism all over the world – the majority (or a vocal minority) decides some trait, whether dark skin, turbans, “squinty eyes”, or anything else, makes the person with that trait inferior to others. It just plain sucks. I do think it’s slowly changing, though, as globalization brings people of different nationalities and ethinicities into more (personal) contact with each other.
Oh, and for those who are wondering, “eve teasing” is when men on the street in South Asia sexually harass or even grope women (usually ones traveling by themselves). It’s normally an urban phenomena. Some cities of India have really bad reputations for this (Delhi, maybe?), and other places, like Bombay, try to maintain their reputation for being safe for women.
@ Mani – thanks for stopping by the blog and commenting! India is such a massive country that I imagine it’ll take me quite awhile to travel its length & breadth.
And wow, you have some really amazing shots up on flickr! I particularly like the framing and colors in Holy Waters
April 15th, 2008 at 7:17 am
I was watching CNN the other day and they were talking about Boston having a problem with groping in public transport. In fact, they were talking about how the Boston Police Department now has undercover “Grope Patrol” to catch people who grope women. I think the complete story is available on the Boston Herald website (March 20′ 2008). I guess, groping is a problem for women in many big cities around the world.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
@ Chanakya – thanks for stopping by the blog & commenting! I hadn’t heard about the Boston subway issue, but I know that groping is a major problem on Japanese subway systems.
March 10th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Great blog.. lot's to catch up..I'm the brown half in our relationship… it's been a wonderful learning experience and a lot of fun. It's also great to see others in similar relationships, am really loving it. Great site GoriGirl.
I don't mean to rain on you being a rock star, I think it's hilarious and endearing. My wife too loves the attention. I do however have to agree with “6mile” though.
Though Africans are treated badly everwhere, it's particularly bad for them in India.
In College in India, we had a few international students from African countries, they and the ScheduledCaste students were the most hated/despised. I guess at a subconscious level we equate Africans to the untouchables. It's deeply ingrained in our psyche, and unfortunately backed up by religion.
We visit India often, but the level of apathy and prejudiced not to mention the poverty still shocks me.
March 11th, 2009 at 9:50 am
My cousin's husband is German and he caused this kind of commotion when he visited Pakistan too haha
Thankfully he was used to it since he had traveled abroad before. As soon as he landed, a hoard of beggars literally attached onto his leg.
July 27th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
ah yes…I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but our Indian wedding was on the local news!!!!! I've actually spent most of my life trying not to draw attention to myself, so this was something I had a pretty hard time dealing with. Still working on getting used to it
November 7th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Something like this happened to me when on a family road trip from Bombay to Shirdi. I was with my husband, his brother, and their parents and we had been in the car all day, with about three hours spent at Shirdi itself. On the way back, we stopped for a break at a roadside stall in a small town in the hills of rural Maharashtra. I sat in the car, but opened the car door and stretched my legs out. Along came a schoolbus full of young kids driving slowly down the road (although it was a small town, there was plenty of traffic). The bus stopped next to the car and all the kids rushed to the near side of the bus to gawk open-mouthed at the white girl in salwar kameez. At first I was a little uncomfortable, but then I just smiled big and gave them a happy wave. Immediately all the kids started laughing and smiling and waving back!
I swear, Indian kids seem to be the happiest kids on the planet.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Maybe it’s just Maharashtrian kids – this happened in Maharastra as well!
February 5th, 2010 at 12:25 am
@ Normus: There’s nothing more heart-warming than spreading a smile.
Thanks!
@GG: Assure you, it’s the same thing all over India.
BTW, have you visited Kerala/Kashmir?
Both are breathtakingly beautiful!