Today, a painful lesson.

It’s a lesson I don’t know exactly how to write about although I want to, perhaps as a way to figure out how to make sense of what happened and still feel as passionately about India as I have for 3 weeks now. Up to now, I’ve always had a very self-assured view of myself as a female, American traveler.

While I understand Americans are not always embraced abroad, I do my best to show respect for other faiths, cultures and lifestyles as I firmly believe that our differences are what make our world a richer, more interesting place. And while I always try to be practical and keep myself from dangerous situations, I also want to be a part of the action—seeing the cities and towns I visit from a local perspective by staying in guest houses, eating at authentic restaurants and talking to the rickshaw drivers, shop keepers and waiters like human beings, not as less intelligent “natives” if you will. In fact, I am quite passionate about it, almost scoffing at the people dining in the sheltered bubble of the Holiday Inn Hotel restaurant or seeing but not feeling the place they are visiting by peering at it from the safety of their air-con tour buses. But I was reminded today that there are places I am not invited to, or welcome at, despite my genuine curiosity. And that as a white woman especially, I may stand out and invite intimidation.

We arrived in the Pink City, Jaipur, today, exhausted from travel and another set of sleepless nights at a hole in the wall hotel in Udaipur. As a result of our bad hotel karma thus far, David and I actually decided to channel our worst American tourist tendencies – especially ironic given my aforementioned stereotype – and stay in the Trident Hilton chain outside of the city to escape the incessant horns, sleep in clean sheets that don’t require make-shift t-shirt pillowcases, and a place that actually has toilet paper and towels in the bathroom.

We didn’t set out until late thanks to the 5:30 am wakeup call in Udaipur, but visited the City Palace (lovely) and the nearby Govind Devji Hindu temple, escorted by a random guy on a motorcycle whose acquaintance happened to own the News Café in Miami Beach—a spot at which I’ve dined with David, Carol, Lew, Martha and Sy. He took us to the temple and explained the ceremony that was taking place; very beautiful and peaceful, despite the monkeys hanging out on the walls outside. (TMI—one started peeing on one of the guards from his perch above).

At that point, we left him to be a part of what we imagined to be some authentic local color —the parade marking the festival of Muharram, or the Islamic New Year – as we had noticed the effort put into decorating the main street in the Old City here as well as in Udaipur. But not without a warning—as our Miami Beach buddy as well as our City Palace guide told us to stay away from the Muslim event, or at least to view the action from afar.

Here’s where it gets tricky— the Islamic religion is in itself something I can’t help but to have an unease about in terms of the extremist violence that rears itself in war-torn countries and what I perceive to be its treatment of women. In particular, it has been hard for me on this trip to accept the oppression of women by the very nature of what they are forced to wear in this heat—a woman wearing a burqua that covers everything but her eyes while men walk freely in Western-style clothing seems by its very nature an insult to the relative freedom and independence American women like me are given and take for granted. But I very much have kept an open mind in India and at home, despite the subtle and not so subtle anti-Islamic commentary expressed by some of the Hindu guides and shopkeepers we’ve met. I’ve been lucky enough to visit several beautiful mosques on this trip, befriend some wonderful Muslim people and have read extensively about the expression of the religion, and its co-existence with the Hindu faith in Indian history. So the Muharram Festival seemed a natural thing to take part in, even from the sidelines.

For the first few minutes, it was enthralling, almost Mardi Gras-like. There was a float-less parade lining the main boulevard as thousands men, young and old, marched. There was music and drums and food of every kind lining the streets, with the women and children pressed up against the shop fronts. And then it got ugly somehow—crowds pushing inward, staring, jeering, intimidating. Suddenly we were the only foreigners in sight, and I the only white woman, and the ominous mood was palpable. Then a group of men got close, leering at me, and one of them reached out to grab my backside. I panicked inwardly, disgusted, but was too numb and too outnumbered at that point to say anything. David reacted—grabbing one of the mena, screaming at him to get his hands off and all I could think was that this was one of those things you read about in the newspapers, two Americans in the wrong place at the wrong time and something goes horribly wrong. 

Somehow the moment passed without incident but the worst part was, we couldn’t get away from the parade. There was no way to escape as the men were everywhere and the crowds were growing more intense as darkness prevailed, but at one point, a young guy ran up to us and asked us to follow him, he would help us but why did we ever come to see this festival? Did we not know it was for Muharram? He was a Hindu shopkeeper on that street, he said, and it was dangerous for us, for me, to be there. He wanted to show us a back route out of the area (although in retrospect, even he tried to sell me some pashmina shawls on the way out… ah, India).

We gratefully, almost mutely, took the back alley he pointed to, but then were simply lost in a maze of muddy streets with the sound of drums everywhere, with our hearts pounding to match. I can’t think of a feeling more terffifying than helplessness and the sense of being a minority than that moment.

The intensity of the night never seemed to end. Eventually we found an auto-rickshaw driver to take us out of the old city, but each of the gates were blocked by the parade and we sat, immobile in our rickshaw for what seemed like hours in the horn-filled dark and cold. And suddenly it seemed like everyone was staring, looking into our unprotected, exposed rickshaw as our driver ran about chattering excitedly to the other drivers packed into the smelly streets like sardines. And again, I couldn’t help think of the headlines…. Is this how it happens? In the dark, it seemed like no one could be trusted.  

Clearly we eventually escaped the city walls, eating dinner in silence, not sure what to make of it all. But then the questions, what happened? What does this mean? How does one continue to live in the moment and enjoy an unknown city after being touched in such a way by strangers? All I wanted to do was hole up like the package-tourists and find my own bubble that prevents me from enjoying the India I’ve grown to love.  

I’m not sure how it is going to be tomorrow. Will I be able to bear the staring the same way as before? Walk down a street when there are no other foreigners in sight as I relished doing before? Hear the muezzin call and not think about the crush of the angry Muharram crowd?  I don’t know.

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