More Travels and Travails

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Dears! Sorry about the radio silence -- we've been traveling the country as a family party! Ma Mere, Canadian-Tourist masquerading as my mother-in-law, my Aunt, Cousin and I have been been from Mysore to Bangalore to Jaipur to Agra to Delhi and back. We've finally rid ourselves -- excuse me, lost -- the rellies and now it's just Canadian Tourist with me. We're in Kerala now: it's lovely, especially after the craziness of the North.

Anyway, yesterday in Fort Kochi (the oldest part of Cochin as was) we saw a dilapidated portrait of Che Guevara, hung in an empty office. Of course, this is still India so as soon as we started taking pictures of it, we gathered a small audience. It turns out that Che is adorning the walls of the Democratic Youth Federation of India; the comrades who were surprised by us were a little unsure of what to make of us (obviously middle class Indian woman and older white tourist admiring a ratty Che on their wall) but welcoming nonetheless. Canadian Tourist's assertion that she'd been to Cuba was met with nods and grins: "Che, Cuba. Ah, good." All in all, I think it will be my fondest memory of the day.

After wandering through Jaipur and Agra and Delhi -- cities which seem to be tourist hubs and nothing else, where poverty is obvious everywhere, with children begging at every corner and crowds of unemployed men staring after you, Canadian Tourist and I have decided that Kerala is certainly better off after its decades of unbroken Communist rule. We've yet to encounter a begging child, though as Canadian Tourist has remarked, the acid test for that is going to be the railway station. Still, while it's clear that there is poverty and unemployment here in Kerala, it's not as blatant. I don't know if that simply means that it's not visible to us.... but it seems to me that there isn't the same sense of desperation attached to making money off tourists in the South as there is in the North. This is pure speculation but that suggests to me that the economies here are not that weak because let's face it, economies that depend entirely on tourism are under a lot of pressure. There's always going to be a newer, cheaper, less touristy, more "authentic" experience on offer somewhere else.

There's lots more to be said about the tourist experience and what that means in a country like India. Until now, even if I couldn't pass for a local, traveling with family or with Infosys Grrl has meant that I've passed for some kind of Indian. That makes for an entirely different experience: there are some ways in which it is extremely confining to travel in India as an Indian woman -- if you don't live up to the expectations of "decency," then you're putting yourself at risk. For those of you who are skeptical, yesterday's Deccan Herald (the Bangalore newspaper) headlined a story about a woman who got into a taxi at the airport late one night and demanded to be taken to a "5-star hotel." A couple of failed attempts at getting a room later, she ended up in a service apartment belonging to a "friend" of the cab driver's... and emerges 5 days later, having been raped and abused. The story goes on; it seems to be getting murkier but my point is only that such stuff is not uncommon. I don't think it would happen to someone -- male or female -- who is readily identified as a tourist -- so being one and acting like one provides you with some immunity. In the popular imagination, Indian women come in two forms -- "decent" (whatever that means though I suspect it has a lot to do with silence and sexual repression and not traveling alone or demanding independence) or not. And heaven help the ones who are classified as not.