Dust rolled around the roadside concession shack as we stood, drinking chai tea.
The shack had all the similar characteristics of many working class establishments along the Indian roadway: one side open to the road and the rest thatched bamboo; bamboo poles haphazardly lashed onto a thatched roof, covered in frayed tarp that flapped in the breeze; small, dirty plastic chairs around some metal tables on the dark and smoky inside; a decent contingent of regulars, sitting facing out and chatting intermittently, set in this part of their daily routine in a way that was part familial, part almost haughty, smug. The shack was quasi rectangular, on the side of a wild desert road, dilapidated but proudly functional.
A whistle sounded, and the riders of our bus snuffed out their leaf cigarettes (beedies), tossed cups to the side of the road, and made their way on the bus. The Australian and I found our seats, and the bus continued, leaving the dusty shack behind.
A bump disturbed me. It was the belly of a large man! Followed by a wife and three wide-eyed children, he sat down in front of the Australian. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see the entire family peeking around the seat to stare at us. I looked over at them directly. At once, they shifted their eyes elsewhere. The husband and wife stared out of the window, while the three children turned to each other and giggled.
Incidents like that are nearly constant in public. The stares and waves are are one thing, but the random kissing noises I received while walking are qualitatively different. I should clarify briefly, because I was confused at first, too! See, many of the rural villagers use sort of a loud kissing sound to signal to dogs, cats, goats, sheep and cows. Recipients of this noise, as far as male villagers are concerned, may include white people. This is sensible when one desires to summon attention, as most white people are not expected to understand that village's Kannada. However, there are rather frightening intellectual consequences. Was I like a farm animal to people, a conscious being that holds potential use but is not of their familial group? I'm afraid that I never quite found out the answer. Once I got used to it, though, I started to do it in return, which alleviated some of my immediate (but not my existential) concerns, and lent a rather naughty homosocial element to my strolling that, as far as I could tell, only I perceived.
Looks like this raise another, deeper point: I could not escape my whiteness. I had struggled to accept this for the first few months of my arrival here. Part of why I came here was to be the only person of my racial group. In my naive hypothesizing, I could finally understand what many of my international friends in the US had had to go through. I would emerge less racist than before.
But every bit of attention I receive on account of my race is positive: here, my white skin makes me a symbol of beauty and wealth. Many people have commented on how lovely my skin is; one man whom I met traveling on the unreserved class on the Mumbai express (a horribly uncomfortable, crowded and sweaty 15 hour ordeal), after tearfully telling me of the caste restrictions that prevented him from marrying the woman he loved, told me that I was the most fair and beautiful of his friends. Indeed, there is a whole industry around whitening the skins of all genders: "Fair and Lovely" cream generates billions of dollars in profits yearly for the Unilevers corporation . And in nearly every Bollywood movie I have seen, Europe is where wealthy Indians who have "made it" go to vacation or retire; in Action Jackson, whenever a girl thinks about going to America, her eye balls are quite literally replaced with dollar signs with the American flag waving in the backdrop.
This perception of wealth led to many awkward situations. For instance, villagers often ask the cost of some of my belongings. Even if I had specifically chosen the belonging to minimize cost, such as my flimsy on-sale Dell laptop, its price generally surpass several month's salary of the asker. To avoid the eye-widening and murmuring that results, I began to deflate my laptops' price, but then some villagers, savvy enough to know its Indian price, asked me to bring them laptops and promised to pay me back in full. Some enterprising ones even asked for multiple copies. I eventually had to stick to the truth and suffer the consequences rather than disappoint the whole village.
So, despite my going days without seeing another white person, I don't quite think I have achieved my initial goal; I am ashamed to admit that I may perhaps be even more racist now. In a society that so strongly sees whiteness as better, it is difficult to prevent that notion from creeping into my own psyche, at least to some deeply subconscious part. It is so disturbingly easy to merely enjoy the positive attention I receive, and not question it more deeply. Even more scary, I find that if I don't catch myself, I begin to believe it's deserved, as if I somehow earned this skin and these eyes.
Structures of oppression don't have to be always overtly negative in the ways they ingrain themselves into us. Sometimes, I suppose, it's the aspects that seem most harmless that are more dangerous, the ones that are harder to isolate, identify and question.
Well...
"Anand Rao circle!"
I jolted awake. I shook my head at this recurring line of thought - are we doomed always to hopelessly ponder hierarchies, never to resolve them? Or is my knowledge inadequate, childish relative to great academic thinkers? - and then I gathered my stuff and walked off the bus. The Australian waved at me from the window, and with that, the crazy bus rumbled her out of my life.
It was time to put the ethical dilemmas and the somewhat forced narrative transitions of this article on hold and get onto to the next adventure.