He too had. He then confidently declared, though he has never been to India, that there was no way foreigners can simply walk around like that outside their hotel.
I told him that was entirely possible. India is not like the South American countries where cities are far from safe havens for locals and tourists alike, I told him.
Since then, I have wondered if I jinxed the situation with that kind of a remark. Not a day passes without yet another news report on rape or physical assault in India, and on foreign tourists also. The latest was this one:
Just days after a Swiss woman told police she was gang-raped while camping with her husband in central India, Indian officials say there’s been another unpleasant episode involving a foreign woman traveler.What is going on in that country?
A British woman says she jumped from the balcony of her hotel room in the northern city of Agra on Tuesday morning to escape sexual harassment, according to local police.
Did such things always happen even in the past, but simply went unreported? Was I living in my own fool's paradise?
The description in the New Yorker that I really, really, liked, now takes on such an ominous interpretation:
India, with its dazzling light, crowds, noise, and dust, is inevitably a test for the old. Withdrawing from the lure and demand of the place is the same as withdrawing from life. Face it straight on, and you defy mortality.When I read that a while ago in the New Yorker's review (sub reqd) of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I though it was such a brilliantly constructed set of words that so easily conveyed the strange attraction that India has. Face India straight on and you defy mortality was such a beautiful way to capture the experience of India. And, yes, if one were to withdraw from what it is, well, one might as well withdraw from life.
Though the reviewer was also referring to that wonderfully phenomenal experience of traveling in India and immersing in everything there, the recent string of bizarre and negative reports make the whole idea of mortality very, very literal.
Oh well ... I can't ever understand the country where I was born and raised!
3 comments:
Such news are puzzling me too. My naive feeling is that these are new things....such incidents did not happen in the past. Why they are happening? I don't know. Overall, there is a theme here of being able to get away with stuff. And people (especially the youth) are so lazy....everyone wants to become rich without putting in sincere effort.
Opposite view to Shachi - it sounds heartless, but crime against tourists went on before and I guess, alas, falls within the statistical average of the horrors humans inflict on themselves. Many other countries, if not all, have the same problem to a greater or lesser degree. I've felt more unsafe at noon in Rome than in midnight at Muzzaffarpur.
A different, but real fact is that India is an extremely tourist unfriendly country . Athithi devo bhava is a joke. Tourists are scammed at every opportunity right from the airport, everything is so difficult to do in India, hygiene everywhere, especially for a traveler is non existent, costs are not proportional to service - hotel rates like for like are one of the costliest in the world. I frequent a lot of travel blogs and almost uniformly, I have heard the refrain - never again to India.
And we are supposed to be a hospitable culture. Bollocks.
Academic studies have, in the past, always pointed out how safe cities in India are compared to cities in the countries in Africa and the Americas. It was always a puzzle to those from the West that in a country with quite a few hundreds of millions of poor, well, that poverty was not unleashing crimes against those who were better off. Thus, the classic case, which I have also experienced--one could walk through a city's slums with no worries whatsoever ... at least, that was the story for the males.
Crimes against tourists too were of the petty kind--typically fleece them at every possible point in an otherwise legal situation. Taxis might take them on a long route for more charge. But, even the foreign tourist who was hesitant about India rarely felt unsafe.
Which is why the recent reports of assault are especially awful. And, again, the attacks were not from the poor, and were instead from the lower-middle class or the middle class.
I agree with you, Ramesh, that these are well within the statistical averages. But, the situation seemed to have been much better in the past.
Oh, don't get me started on the "athithi devo bhava" kind of statements. Right from my younger days, I have found it to be extremely depressing that most people in India mouth off such profound statements and not practice it one bit. I would much rather that they did whatever they did without uttering such grand ideas.
Getting away with stuff is not anything new in India, Shachi. (BTW, I notice you are a friend of my public FB page, but I couldn't find an option to "friend you" on your page.) Caste and class have always privileged a few over the many. Compared to the big time crimes committed by those in political and corporate power, well, ....
Dammit, what a depressing way to start the day :( will go read Calvin & Hobbes to cheer myself up ;)
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