Gettin' Photographed

To be white in India is to be very Other, in the sociological (or pretentious non-sociologist) sense. By now, I don’t really notice my Otherness too much, except for in the handful of situations where it becomes awkwardly brought into focus. One of the more amusing of these instances occurs nearly whenever I’ve gotten to a tourist attraction. Despite being places with more foreigner presence, most tourists are Indian, and especially at mosques, many of them tend to not be from major cities. Thus the sight of a white person is pretty exciting, and, in fact, meriting of the taking of pictures to celebrate the sighting of such an odd piece of fauna. This usually comes in the form of someone bashfully approaching you and then pointing to their camera so that they can get a picture with you in it; other times, they just snap away animal-in-the-zoo style, not caring how you might feel about it.

One of my favorite times was in the bus ride over to the Taj Mahal, I was seated next to a large group of people who were together on a tour. One of them tried to be subtle and was sort of posing the people sitting right next to me… and then turning his camera and just taking a picture of me. After an initial bit of shock, I just smiled and looked directly at the camera.

Because this is a pretty commonly acknowledged issue among foreigners, I think a great pick-up line would be to go up to a random white woman on the street and ask to have your picture taken with her, but people at work have refused to do it. So if any of you are in India and either bolder or less monogamous than I, try it out and tell me how it goes!

Along the lines of the post, here’s a picture of me with my dad at the Taj Mahal. It’ll likely be the only one I post for a while since I don’t have a camera (it was taken by someone we befriended while in Agra), but I may buy one eventually.