nilima en el mundo

Today Vasi and I paid 60 rupees to take a small boat across the Ganges, well that’s what we thought it would do, but it was really just a two-minute joy ride out and back. I cleared my seat from the water that was filling the boat and sat down next to a man holding a fichety baby, he handed me the baby, as his family beamed at us. Im not actually sure if they took a picture of us or not, but that’s the theme of this entry, so let’s say they did. I was really overjoyed to hold the adorable baby.

Yesterday and today Vasi and I have gone off to find waterfalls away from the main area of Rishikesh (it’s a pilgrimage destination on the banks of the Ganges. It’s built up with ashrams and hotels, and is relatively clean and extremely visitor friendly — so suited to tourists, that finding Israeli food is as easy as Indian. Anyway it’s the ‘off season’ and there aren’t many westerners, (maybe because its been 120 degrees F).

Anyway, on our walks we first went along the road until the trail veers off into the woods (yesterday the sign up to the waterfall read “Entry into . . . preserve striclty prohibited” Forgetting we were in India for a second we asked a few people and got the same response, “No Problem Madam, No problem” so we repeated the phrase so charmingly ubiquitous here and proceeded up the trail).Yesterday an extended family,
with about 12 members in a ‘jeep’ abruptly halted when they saw Vasi on the road side, the father/uncle jumped out of the car,

“can we have one snap with you?” (by now we understand that to mean picture).

“Uh, sure” Vasi said, not sure where to stand. I was trying to ignore this commotion and figure out how to get back to our showers, food and water after a great but exhausting hike. But, before I knew it, the whole family was piling out of the car, a chubby pre-teen boy showing off his English sputtered out questions,

“where are you from” “how are you?” “how old are you”etc etc, just as i was trying to show off my Hindi, in now what is becoming a sort of routine — ‘I dont speak Hindi well” “we are from America” dialogue.

The one man was the most excited and exclaimed to Vasi —

“You are my son!” which was quickly corrected by the chubby boy (not a bad mistake considering today a bunch of creepy DJs from Delhi followed us on a different hike and when we gave them water and I offered them more, repeating from my tape without thinking, i actually said “do you want aything else?” instead of “do you want more water” Oops.

Anyway, the man of this family grabbed Vasi and kissed her cheek as the others gathered round, with quick smiles and introductions. Only the man’s wife looked totally dehydrated or just pissed at the situation and didnt even pretend to smile as he grabbed her arm and shoved her in front of us, grinning

“this is my wife, young no?”

the rest of the people seemed genuinely happy though and we finally took our snaps, declined their generous offers for rides, (despite the fact that there was litterally less than no room in the Jeep), smiled at offers to visit them in their native places etc etc and were off.

This is just one small example of the attention we get. Off course many people call out to us to bye their wares, and some (like the afformentioned Delhi DJs, are creepy and follow us in the woods asking annoying questions), but a surpising number seem genuinely and sweetly eager to talk/take our pics. This type of attention used to make me feel uncomfortable, I thought it represented a pathetic state in which we were honored for no reason other than our skin, that these Indians thought we were special or celebrities or superior and treated us with too much respect. But, Im realizing, some of that might be true, but the novelty works both ways. We are just as eager to take snaps of Indians (or as Vasi says when she asks permission, to annuciate, Pho-toe?) as they are of us. While we (general term for westerners, and I must fit in to too) want to feel that we’ve seen exotic people and places, they too want to show off for their friends and families. Most people here are giving of having their picts taken*, so why should we? It’s getting a bit annoying as people stop traffic on the walking brdge as cows are herded through and motorcycles scream their horns and people fiddle with their cameras to get our pics, but generally it makes me feel less exploitive when I openly videotape an interesting scene.

(*okay there was one man with AMAZING dreads, and he knew it and would’t let us take his pic for free, or eve 5 ruppees or papad, so we gave up bargaining, but that’s the exception). Still, i have mixed feelings on drawing so much attention. More on that later undoubtedly.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 9:40 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.