Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Retaliation or Cultural Exchange?
These are some old thoughts that I wrote up a couple of weeks ago, but got distracted and never posted. As a result they feel a bit out-of-date, but they do sum up some experiences of the female question here for those who are interested. I'm in McLeod Ganj, home of exiled Dalai Lama who is here until his birthday on July 6 (I just knew he was a Cancer); by contrast with dim but eager Kashmir, at the moment McLeod Ganj feels thriving and happy.
Rafiq told me that the reason some men here have crazy ideas about the looseness of white women is that they've watched too many American movies. What movies are they watching? Not Terms of Endearment. Not Steel Magnolias. Not Stepmom. That's for sure.
Maybe he meant porn. All the computers at internet facilities are private, with curtains or doors, I don't think because of all the internet banking.
But that's not really fair, is it; even in the finest movies, like Pretty Women and Striptease, women have serial lovers, one-night stands, etc.
There are a few women besides tourists on the streets of Srinigar who don't cover their heads, most women cover their heads but their faces are not covered, say 17% (please go with it) wear burkas, and I've seen a few women use their scarves to cover their mouths as well as heads, though this is most likely to avoid a nearby stench. If a full burka looks as deliberate and conscientious as can be imagined, a burka with the veil pushed back so the face is revealed looks refreshingly careless, somewhat the way a man in a business suit looks when he throws his tie over his shoulder. I don't think I've seen any women locals wearing Western attire but many men do, some of the younger ones looking quite flashy; the young men like to dress in a European style, tight form-fitting shirts, any buttons undone at the neck, slick multi-pocketed jeans that are systematically faded and sometimes painfully tight (painful to look at). As in Delhi, the people on the street in Srinigar are about 90% men.
Maybe two Sundays ago I went walking with Tasleema in Shalimar Barg, one of the three huge gardens built here by the Mughals, who loved a good garden. Shalimar has plots of rose bushes, long rows of poppies in shades of red and pink, many grassy areas where tourists and locals alike sit and have picnics, and a coursing cement waterway with shallow fountains and waterfalls. This is all in front of Alp-like Himalayas. It's always so pretty and funny to me when people put potted plans or rose bushes in front of really stunning natural beauty; in what seems to me a very touching way it says, "we can improve on this", and also "look how little we can improve on this", or "look how mere we are", as one of my friends would say. I wonder how the Mughals would feel if I said their grand gardens were mere. But I don't wonder too much since they're dead.
When I walk with Tasleema my whitefemaleness is invisible because she is very tall and stately. Here, I can give you proof. In the garden, a man sitting on a blanket with his gorgeous, shy-looking wife looked at us, his teeth gleaming, and said, "You look like Kashmiri girls."
We had just left a previous garden because there was a spooky gardener staring at us, a small scythe-like gardening tool in his hand, so this felt the more annoying. I told the wolfish man that Tasleema WAS a Kashmiri girl, which wasn't short of obvious, and he said again, as if it were the very most reliable pick-up line, "You look like Kashmiri girls." Maybe it was the only English he knew.
Admittedly we'd been drawing attention to ourselves; we'd been playing soccer with a half-filled water bottle, and Tasleema is fiercely competitive so it was a lot of movement in that frisbee-less park.
I turned to his wife, who had been looking at us as if she weren't part of the conversation. I introduced myself and she did the same, and gave that soft, vague handshake that, aside from the big kiss greeting, is the other very common handshake. I made a little more smalltalk while alternatively glancing blankly at him and trying to smile as warmly at her as I possibly could. Finally she broke into a huge, deep, shy, surprised smile, as if I had bestowed something really, really great on her. Goddammit. Goddammit. Is this as much attention as she ever gets?
For those of you who read my defunct staring blog or know about how common and accepted staring here is, and how white women seem particularly fascinating to people, one of my friends proposed that some women must travel here because of the ego rush. I wanted to talk about that. There can definitely be an ego rush, but I think you would have to lack a certain amount of knowledge to ride that wave. For me the appropriate biological response ("I feel pretty! Oh so pretty!") is followed by a bunch of cerebral machinations about what they're seeing versus good old me. But much, much more powerful than that is that I frequently feel I'm doing my sequestered sisters an injustice by befriending some of the men I meet. At first the desire to have any friends, and then the need for help in navigating or flagging down transportation, won out, and there I was, smiling agreeably at the assistance perpetually offered. But a series of those encounters has been making me more self-reliant.
As I've said, in Srinigar it's very clear that many men are walking after you in the hope of either a visa or sex. In addition, in large part because there's no other way to advertise, men come walking after you on the street to get you to buy something. I'd just started to feel okay ignoring them when I got this: "Hello Madam, how are you?" Ignored him. "I just want to talk to you." I turned and smiled and said "I'm sorry no thank you." "Can I have five minutes with you?" I crossed to the other side of the street. "You are not nice you are not kind you are not polite!" On the other hand, a nice 21yo man seemed much more agreeable, and I believe would have settled for a friend, a customer, an import-export partner, OR a wife-and-visa.
The following Wednesday I took my longest walk alone all around Lal Chowk and the residential area Raj Bagh and back to the city center of Dal Gate, full of very old homes. (Who, what will tell you how old? Despite a day of bookstores, I did not find that source, but Rashid, the guide at the Dabloos, agrees: "Very old".) As I walked, I thought about how all the stares were triggering every stereotype I had and all the wrong receptors: my image of what a terrorist looks like, my idea of when to cross the street when someone stares at you in a certain way. It was an intellectual battlefield that felt a lot like playing Centipede (sorry I think that's the last video game I played), shooting down all these stereotypes that keep falling on you, and it made me feel very tired and drained.
After the walk I was also very hungry and sat down in a small--16 by 16 foot--open-air restaurant for lunch. A few of the men in the restaurant stared at me in their different ways, not looking away when I looked back, in the Indian style. Sitting there, I was thinking how I should have been coming up with good questions about people's experience in Kashmir, but what I really wanted to ask was what men here thought when they saw a white woman like me. I was wondering if they would ever tell me if I asked straight out. Then I was thinking perhaps I could have a focus group, pay each 100 rupees ($2.50), keep their identities' secret and write it up. I know how sensitive this issue is here, but it was hard for me to imagine that people who were so brazen with their looks would not talk about it.
(I have already talked about it with I think two Indian men and two Indian women, but none of these were starers. In one chat room a man wrote that people should stop trying to decipher the Indian man's stare and chalk it up to one of the many mysteries of India. Now why on earth do that???)
My food came, then a young man came up to me and asked if he could look at the book I was reading. Then he asked me some stuff about myself, and I, so tired and hungry, couldn't muster the conversation. I told him I would talk to him when I finished eating. Then without really thinking I asked for a to-go bag. As I waited I still couldn't imagine talking to him. Then he and his friend sat next to me at my four-seat table and ordered food. The first boy looked at me and asked me something, maybe where I was staying. I looked at him, leaned in and smiled and said that I was wondering, "When you see a white woman, what do you think of?" His face broke into a smile, as if happy the engagement had begun. As if the surface tension of our interaction had been broken. "Nice," he smiled.
"What else?" I asked. "Different minds." "What do you mean by different minds?" "They think different things." His face lost its smile, but it was if he were too busy fielding the questions to find another expression. "What kinds of things?" I was still smiling and looking at him intently, having watched too much Barbara Walters and being driven by some fuel I didn't know I had.
"I cannot say."
"Oh but you can, because, you see, in our country we talk about these things."
"No, I can't," he said very seriously, and now his face looked very grave. I looked down, and I remember wondering whether his face would show any embarrassment when I looked up. It did: his face and neck were the deepest red all over. I said (I really wasn't being unkind) "Could you if I paid you?" "No", he said extremely. I turned to his friend, who had not felt implicated in the conversation and was offering me his Biryani. "Could YOU if I paid you?" "No," he said deeply. The first man didn't look angry at all, only very embarrassed and, it seemed to me, respectful. His friend asked my name and introduced himself. I answered, paid, and bound out, ebullient. As happy as I'd been drained. Spring in my step. I must have looked like the cat who had eaten the canary.
Within 10 meters I started to wonder at myself. The happiness I felt was in direct proportion to the stress I had felt at the various reactions to my skintone--a kind of misdirected and unnecessary retaliation--but I don't think what I did was cruel. I was just calling him on the mat and he knew it.If he could hit on me, I don't see why God wouldn't think he should also be able to put words to it. And yet the reason he couldn't talk about it appeared visibly to do with his, and his friend's, devoutness. It had to do with what their law permits. It didn't have to do--I don't think, but most of this trip is random guessing--with whether I would keep his privacy. He was too devout--visibly--to put words to it, and too scared. How could I not sympathize with this?
I asked two other men about it. The first was a man who, when I said I was going to the Hazratbal mosque, said, oh, me too, and hopped on the damn bus with me. (This is what Rafiq had done too. You need to go to the gym? I need to go to the gym.) Hazratbal man said, this is a very embarrassing thing to discuss. Ogling's fine?? "Hello honey" is fine??? The other said that if I had gotten to know these guys, after a day or two they'd open up. But at that moment I didn't want to get to know them.
Rafiq told me that the reason some men here have crazy ideas about the looseness of white women is that they've watched too many American movies. What movies are they watching? Not Terms of Endearment. Not Steel Magnolias. Not Stepmom. That's for sure.
Maybe he meant porn. All the computers at internet facilities are private, with curtains or doors, I don't think because of all the internet banking.
But that's not really fair, is it; even in the finest movies, like Pretty Women and Striptease, women have serial lovers, one-night stands, etc.
There are a few women besides tourists on the streets of Srinigar who don't cover their heads, most women cover their heads but their faces are not covered, say 17% (please go with it) wear burkas, and I've seen a few women use their scarves to cover their mouths as well as heads, though this is most likely to avoid a nearby stench. If a full burka looks as deliberate and conscientious as can be imagined, a burka with the veil pushed back so the face is revealed looks refreshingly careless, somewhat the way a man in a business suit looks when he throws his tie over his shoulder. I don't think I've seen any women locals wearing Western attire but many men do, some of the younger ones looking quite flashy; the young men like to dress in a European style, tight form-fitting shirts, any buttons undone at the neck, slick multi-pocketed jeans that are systematically faded and sometimes painfully tight (painful to look at). As in Delhi, the people on the street in Srinigar are about 90% men.
Maybe two Sundays ago I went walking with Tasleema in Shalimar Barg, one of the three huge gardens built here by the Mughals, who loved a good garden. Shalimar has plots of rose bushes, long rows of poppies in shades of red and pink, many grassy areas where tourists and locals alike sit and have picnics, and a coursing cement waterway with shallow fountains and waterfalls. This is all in front of Alp-like Himalayas. It's always so pretty and funny to me when people put potted plans or rose bushes in front of really stunning natural beauty; in what seems to me a very touching way it says, "we can improve on this", and also "look how little we can improve on this", or "look how mere we are", as one of my friends would say. I wonder how the Mughals would feel if I said their grand gardens were mere. But I don't wonder too much since they're dead.
When I walk with Tasleema my whitefemaleness is invisible because she is very tall and stately. Here, I can give you proof. In the garden, a man sitting on a blanket with his gorgeous, shy-looking wife looked at us, his teeth gleaming, and said, "You look like Kashmiri girls."
We had just left a previous garden because there was a spooky gardener staring at us, a small scythe-like gardening tool in his hand, so this felt the more annoying. I told the wolfish man that Tasleema WAS a Kashmiri girl, which wasn't short of obvious, and he said again, as if it were the very most reliable pick-up line, "You look like Kashmiri girls." Maybe it was the only English he knew.
Admittedly we'd been drawing attention to ourselves; we'd been playing soccer with a half-filled water bottle, and Tasleema is fiercely competitive so it was a lot of movement in that frisbee-less park.
I turned to his wife, who had been looking at us as if she weren't part of the conversation. I introduced myself and she did the same, and gave that soft, vague handshake that, aside from the big kiss greeting, is the other very common handshake. I made a little more smalltalk while alternatively glancing blankly at him and trying to smile as warmly at her as I possibly could. Finally she broke into a huge, deep, shy, surprised smile, as if I had bestowed something really, really great on her. Goddammit. Goddammit. Is this as much attention as she ever gets?
For those of you who read my defunct staring blog or know about how common and accepted staring here is, and how white women seem particularly fascinating to people, one of my friends proposed that some women must travel here because of the ego rush. I wanted to talk about that. There can definitely be an ego rush, but I think you would have to lack a certain amount of knowledge to ride that wave. For me the appropriate biological response ("I feel pretty! Oh so pretty!") is followed by a bunch of cerebral machinations about what they're seeing versus good old me. But much, much more powerful than that is that I frequently feel I'm doing my sequestered sisters an injustice by befriending some of the men I meet. At first the desire to have any friends, and then the need for help in navigating or flagging down transportation, won out, and there I was, smiling agreeably at the assistance perpetually offered. But a series of those encounters has been making me more self-reliant.
As I've said, in Srinigar it's very clear that many men are walking after you in the hope of either a visa or sex. In addition, in large part because there's no other way to advertise, men come walking after you on the street to get you to buy something. I'd just started to feel okay ignoring them when I got this: "Hello Madam, how are you?" Ignored him. "I just want to talk to you." I turned and smiled and said "I'm sorry no thank you." "Can I have five minutes with you?" I crossed to the other side of the street. "You are not nice you are not kind you are not polite!" On the other hand, a nice 21yo man seemed much more agreeable, and I believe would have settled for a friend, a customer, an import-export partner, OR a wife-and-visa.
The following Wednesday I took my longest walk alone all around Lal Chowk and the residential area Raj Bagh and back to the city center of Dal Gate, full of very old homes. (Who, what will tell you how old? Despite a day of bookstores, I did not find that source, but Rashid, the guide at the Dabloos, agrees: "Very old".) As I walked, I thought about how all the stares were triggering every stereotype I had and all the wrong receptors: my image of what a terrorist looks like, my idea of when to cross the street when someone stares at you in a certain way. It was an intellectual battlefield that felt a lot like playing Centipede (sorry I think that's the last video game I played), shooting down all these stereotypes that keep falling on you, and it made me feel very tired and drained.
After the walk I was also very hungry and sat down in a small--16 by 16 foot--open-air restaurant for lunch. A few of the men in the restaurant stared at me in their different ways, not looking away when I looked back, in the Indian style. Sitting there, I was thinking how I should have been coming up with good questions about people's experience in Kashmir, but what I really wanted to ask was what men here thought when they saw a white woman like me. I was wondering if they would ever tell me if I asked straight out. Then I was thinking perhaps I could have a focus group, pay each 100 rupees ($2.50), keep their identities' secret and write it up. I know how sensitive this issue is here, but it was hard for me to imagine that people who were so brazen with their looks would not talk about it.
(I have already talked about it with I think two Indian men and two Indian women, but none of these were starers. In one chat room a man wrote that people should stop trying to decipher the Indian man's stare and chalk it up to one of the many mysteries of India. Now why on earth do that???)
My food came, then a young man came up to me and asked if he could look at the book I was reading. Then he asked me some stuff about myself, and I, so tired and hungry, couldn't muster the conversation. I told him I would talk to him when I finished eating. Then without really thinking I asked for a to-go bag. As I waited I still couldn't imagine talking to him. Then he and his friend sat next to me at my four-seat table and ordered food. The first boy looked at me and asked me something, maybe where I was staying. I looked at him, leaned in and smiled and said that I was wondering, "When you see a white woman, what do you think of?" His face broke into a smile, as if happy the engagement had begun. As if the surface tension of our interaction had been broken. "Nice," he smiled.
"What else?" I asked. "Different minds." "What do you mean by different minds?" "They think different things." His face lost its smile, but it was if he were too busy fielding the questions to find another expression. "What kinds of things?" I was still smiling and looking at him intently, having watched too much Barbara Walters and being driven by some fuel I didn't know I had.
"I cannot say."
"Oh but you can, because, you see, in our country we talk about these things."
"No, I can't," he said very seriously, and now his face looked very grave. I looked down, and I remember wondering whether his face would show any embarrassment when I looked up. It did: his face and neck were the deepest red all over. I said (I really wasn't being unkind) "Could you if I paid you?" "No", he said extremely. I turned to his friend, who had not felt implicated in the conversation and was offering me his Biryani. "Could YOU if I paid you?" "No," he said deeply. The first man didn't look angry at all, only very embarrassed and, it seemed to me, respectful. His friend asked my name and introduced himself. I answered, paid, and bound out, ebullient. As happy as I'd been drained. Spring in my step. I must have looked like the cat who had eaten the canary.
Within 10 meters I started to wonder at myself. The happiness I felt was in direct proportion to the stress I had felt at the various reactions to my skintone--a kind of misdirected and unnecessary retaliation--but I don't think what I did was cruel. I was just calling him on the mat and he knew it.If he could hit on me, I don't see why God wouldn't think he should also be able to put words to it. And yet the reason he couldn't talk about it appeared visibly to do with his, and his friend's, devoutness. It had to do with what their law permits. It didn't have to do--I don't think, but most of this trip is random guessing--with whether I would keep his privacy. He was too devout--visibly--to put words to it, and too scared. How could I not sympathize with this?
I asked two other men about it. The first was a man who, when I said I was going to the Hazratbal mosque, said, oh, me too, and hopped on the damn bus with me. (This is what Rafiq had done too. You need to go to the gym? I need to go to the gym.) Hazratbal man said, this is a very embarrassing thing to discuss. Ogling's fine?? "Hello honey" is fine??? The other said that if I had gotten to know these guys, after a day or two they'd open up. But at that moment I didn't want to get to know them.
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An extraordinary interaction at the restaurant in Dal Gate. I became tense reading it, like you were taking a chance confronting these guys. I guess that's just a dad reaction but it did make for a great vignette.
Can't wait to hear some more impressions of McLeod Ganj.
Love,
Da'
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Can't wait to hear some more impressions of McLeod Ganj.
Love,
Da'
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