Awful Cab Ride to Mumbai Intl Airport

I finally leave for Canada tomorrow! I can't wait to go home! In hindsight I think a week's long lay-over in London was a bit too stretched out for me when all I really wanted to do, was get home. Though catching up with my British family here has been wonderful. My nieces and nephew grew up so much during the last five months.

Everyone I'm meeting is asking me about about my Indian adventure. Some are inspired by it, others just curious. A few uncles were disappointed in me, and asked me to never travel alone to India again. They especially didn't like learning that I commuted by train alone on several occasions. I reassured them that I had been booking my tickets in advance, and that too, in first-class. And, there were always families or other women sitting nearby me. I think this was something the seating coordinators (or whatever they're called) were doing deliberately when they assigned passenger seats. You have to fill out your age, marital status, etc. when booking. This didn't convince some uncles though, they still think what I did was foolish.

My energy level's been really low since I left India but I think it's because all the travelling has caught up with me, plus I'm only getting about five minutes of sunlight per day in London. It hasn't been too too cold, about -4C on average, but I'm still missing them Indian heat waves.

My cab ride from Ahmedabad to Mumbai was awful. Like most of the men in India, my driver kept pulling out a new packet of chewing tobacco every 10 minutes - gross! The strong stench gave me a terrible headache for the entire 10-hour ride.

He spoke to me about NRIs and how once they're spotted in India, everyone just sees them as dollar signs, something I figured out very early on in my trip anyway. It's quite unfortunate actually, since many NRIs work extremely hard just to earn enough to make it to India. And then you have all these distant relatives expecting you to pay their bills and what not just because they didn't get their chance to make it abroad. Anyway, after warning me about Indians and NRIs being seen as dollar signs, he actually demanded 2000Rs tip money from me when I reached Mumbai.

By tomorrow evening I'll be back in my very own home. Can't wait!!

Beautiful Bodali

I am so happy. My stay in Bodali was wonderful; I got spoiled rotten by my friend's parents. And the villagers in that area are extra friendly.

There were NRIs everywhere, many of whom have come to look for an Indian life partner. I had to make up an elaborate lie once again about why I can't be set up. Some still encouraged me to check out some guys anyway, explaining that if I don't want to take the marriage seriously I should at least do it for the money (people are willing to spend their lifetime savings just to get that green card). Canadians have built an extra bad reputation for accepting money, but apparently New Zealanders are not too far behind anymore.

I just reached Ahmedabad and have to prepare for another train ride to Mumbai. I leave for Thailand tomorrow afternoon. While my village escape was quite relaxing, the travelling in between is exhausting. I'm tired and need to squeeze in some time for a quick nap before packing.

The White Woman!

I’m adding some pictures from my South India trip. Browsing through them I’m realizing we packed in so much during our seven day tour. I’m pretty impressed with what *Stephanie and I got done. Considering neither of us spoke Tamil, Malayalam nor Kannada, we got by pretty smoothly.

It was tough getting around as a lot of the locals spoke heavy-accented (I’m not going to say Indian-accented because it was drastically different from the Indian accent most are familiar with) broken or zero English. Sometimes, as a last resort, I’d ask people if they spoke Hindi, which one of my South Indian friends had already warned me against, and they’d either get offended or laugh as if it was the most absurd question they’d ever heard in their life.

I felt bad for Stephanie; her tall height, white skin and auburn hair got her a lot of unwanted attention despite her dressing in Indian clothes to try and blend in. A lot of Indians asked to get pictures taken with her, a few times she kindly obliged. The men would just gawk and some had no shame in holding their cell phone to her face and take a good shot of the “white girl.”

Calpetta was the worst. We sat down at this restaurant and the men there kept gawking at us, so the waiter moved us over to the ‘family area.’ We sat down next to a family which included a little girl of about three years of age. The innocent girl instantly pointed at Stephanie and began crying! She was horrified by Steph, terror was written all over her face. Of course we didn’t blame the toddler, maybe it was the first time she’d seen someone who was of white skin colour. But her father felt bad and scolded his daughter. It took her a good ten minutes to quiet down.

Stephanie told me she was used to such things here. I don't think everyone can be so thick-skinned. She’s doing her NGO internship in Anand, Gujarat and people there give her extra attention all the time. Along with the photo-snapping, she’s had people point at the freckles on her face and arms, and ask her what type of skin disease she was suffering from!

I’m so thankful to be living in a multicultural country (or maybe I should say multicultural region since there's a lot of segregation in certain parts of Canada as well). Thanks to my exposure, I hadn’t even noticed Stephanie’s many freckles until she pointed them out to me.

I’m glad Steph took the opportunity to challenge herself in India. She doesn’t have any Indian friends back in Holland and can’t recall there even being any where she grew up. She too has her own stereotypes to break free from. When we were in Kochi, for instance, she loudly yelled out to someone, “Hey! That man’s stealing from your bag!” and accusingly pointed at the culprit. I was so embarrassed. All she could see was an Indian thief sneaking stuff out of a white woman’s backpack. But in reality, the “thief” was the European woman’s boyfriend, who happened to be an NRI. Maybe she wasn't used to seeing interracial couples. Steph apologized but the guy was still pretty insulted, I think he swore something under his breath.

So there's racism and cultural stereotypes everywhere. When I'm in Canada for instance no one asks me about my Canadian background. They usually ask me about India and Hinduism and holy cows; but I'm not a scholar in any of those subjects. How nice it would be if everyone were more exposed to varied cultures and took the time to see things from the point of view of others.

Never an Indian, Always an NRI

I may head back to Canada sooner than expected. Not working is driving me nuts already. My interviews aren't going as well as expected. As soon as employers hear about me coming here on a tourist visa, they suddenly seem disinterested.

So I watched a bit of All the Best with some relatives over the week-end. It was an okay film. In it there's this insult that a villian throw's at Sanjay Dutt's character - he calls him an NRI, which he said not only stood for 'Non-Resident Indian' but also a 'Non-Reacting Indian.' One of my uncles' was very impressed by that line, he found it to be quite true and profound. Being an NRI myself here, I found it rather insulting. What's so non-reacting about us?

Being an NRI in India can be a very strange experience. We're seen as immigrants by most people outside of India, and then we're seen as the "other" yet again in our parents' native country.

I say "yeah, yeah" a lot, I never noticed this back home. But here, everyone seems to notice my "yeah, yeah's" (just as often as my American friends notice my "eh's"). They say it's very NRI-ish of me; so is my extensive use of chapstick and tissue paper. On the days that I'm not feeling too hungry, I'm told it's very NRI-ish of me to be dieting. I wonder what other observations Indians have compiled about my kind.
From what I'm experiencing, NRIs are perceived to have very little Indian culture. Some are surprised to learn that I actually have Hindi songs saved on my iTunes. When Akshay Kumar seranaded Kylie Minogue in the last flick I saw, an Uncle talked me through it step-by-step, explaining that the music being played was called "bhan-gr-a" and that it was a "Pun-ja-bi" form of music. If only he knew that Canadians are exposed to a large Punjabi population as well, and at the very least, have heard bhangra blasting out of passing cars from time to time.

There are times when I wish I knew other NRIs here. It'd help being scrutinised as an NRI become less intolerable and more laughable.

Anyhow, I don't have too many new photos to share, so I'm signing off with a few more from my Diwali holiday spent in some Gujarati villages.