White Girl in India

WHITE GIRL IN INDIA

*Note: This post has been in progress since December. It has been challenging to communicate all the thoughts, interactions, conversations, and reflections that I’ve had about skin colour and privilege while living in India. I think that it’s a very important topic to address though and I would feel that this blog is incomplete without giving it a proper post.  

Zahra and I have fallen into this funny of habit of pointing out every time we see other foreigners in Kolkata, “Oh hey! A white person!” There are not many other white people in our neighborhood and after settling into our lives here, we sometimes like to forget we are foreigners – even though we clearly are. I definitely stick out in Kolkata, but being with Zahra (who is Indian) helps me to blend in. Having said that, before coming to India, I knew that my white skin would make me stand out but I didn’t realize the special treatment and acknowledgement I would get because of it.

There have been a number of things that have made me feel awkward. One is when we go to restaurants and a host will lead us to the table and pull out a chair for me and tuck me as I sit down. At first, I thought we were just at a fancy restaurant or the servers had different training compared to what I’m used to. Over time, I noticed that a chair got pulled out for me significantly more often than it got pulled out for Zahra.

One day I was ordering food for us and the server shook his head after I served an item saying “Spicy!” I bobbed my head in agreement and replied “A little spicy is good. A lot spicy is not good.” The server considered me for a moment, looked at Zahra, looked back at me and made his final recommendation: “One spicy, one not spicy.” I agreed.

In the early weeks, I was extremely self-conscious while eating with my hands during a large group meal. I like eating with my hands, it feels very natural and really isn’t an issue. Still, when sitting in a room full of Indian people who have always eaten with their hands, I am rather aware that they are watching me to see how I cope without my usual eating utensils. I am determined (though messy) and will definitely miss eating curry and rice with my hands at home.

Other moments of amusement/awkwardness/interest would include when we are getting a taxi. If I walk up to the window and tell the driver our destination, they will often look past me at Zahra and start speaking in Bengali or Hindi. This doesn’t help them very much as Zahra repeats the exact same English words that I said and then they bob their head in agreement.

When visiting the government shelter home for the first time, I was surrounded by the girls who were curious about me and why I was there to visit. Language was a barrier that day but using gestures and the occasional English word that they knew, we managed. One small girl, age 8 or 9, came up to me and took my arm. In broken English, she explained that my colour of skin was her favourite. She gestured to express how much she disliked her dark skin and told me I was beautiful. She just shook her head when I eagerly returned the compliment.

Many advertisements in this city feature very pale Indian models. Convenience stores stack "whitening lotions" among the soap and shampoo products. At the spa there is a variety of "whitening treatments" available in addition to the usual haircut, pedicures, etc. The fascination with lighter skin is still very prominent.

The most surprising type of encounter I've had is definitely when I'm asked to have my picture taken. The first time this happened was while visiting a temple in Kolkata and I was included in a family picture. A small line-up started as local and visiting Indian families put their arms around me and happily posed. Everywhere I've traveled in India, I get requests to be included in the pictures, however, I no longer say yes. The whole situation makes me uncomfortable. I know that I can make a small child's day by agreeing to a photo, but it is also a nuisance to be constantly stopped. And though I sometimes feel guilty for saying no, I also wish for people to be more used to seeing diversity and realize it's not always appropriate to ask a complete stranger for a picture only on account of her skin colour. 

Of course, this doesn't stop people taking my picture when they think I'm not looking, I have my own paparazzi at times. If I notice the camera I usually duck away or make a face to make it clear that I've noticed and don't appreciate it. Having said that, I also recognize that people take photos of other people and it's made me conscious of how exploitative that process can be. There are definitely moments when I see someone doing something on the street and I think what a great picture it would be. There are many moments, especially when walking through the small neighborhoods in India, that are not appropriate to whip out a camera, though that doesn't stop a lot of tourists sadly. Foreigners would squat on the ghats in Varanasi with their SLR cameras, waiting for the perfect shot of someone bathing in the Ganges river. In the flower market in Kolkata, I watched a group of elderly white women squabbling over the opportunity to take a close up shot of the Indian woman sitting in her market stall.

I find myself balancing my annoyance with the taxi drivers who think they can quadruple charge me with my discomfort when a young girl tells me that she wishes her skin colour was like mine. Skin colour can be a hard topic to talk about but I've been extremely aware of it on this trip. It's been an interesting way for me to think about and acknowledge my privilege, especially the privilege I bear simply because of my appearance, forget where I was born.

For other white people reading this post who have travelled through Asia, being asked for photos is not a new phenomenon and as I continued to travel, I had more and more conversations with other foreigners about being asked for pictures. While I sympathized with their annoyance at constantly being stopped and photographed, I realized that I wasn’t annoyed with people taking photos of me. I was deeply uncomfortable about it. My response was typically to just smile and shake my head, no. It continued to bother me; was there something I could say to start a conversation or make people understand why I was saying no? I wasn’t annoyed and I wasn’t being a jerk. I wanted to be able to engage these photo takers in a deeper conversation about race and skin colour, but unsure of where to start.

All of these encounters indicated to me part of the remaining impact of British colonialism in India as well as the ongoing hierarchical perception of different shades of skin. While I learned a lot from my time in India, and am continuing to unpack my experiences there, one of my greatest takeaways has been what it means to be white foreigner. For all efforts to immerse myself, my perspective will always been from the top down.