It's amazing how many guys will stare at me (and every other Western girl around). This isn't the curious stare of women and children or even the hard stare of the Chinese, this is a lustful, mouth half open kind of stare. It's disgusting! They form large groups to stare which isn't to say that they won't stare when they're alone- they do that too. We had a group of about 35 of them staring at us in the train station the other day. It seems to start from about the age of 12 and gets worse from there.
At least I haven't been groped. We met a Spanish girl who was traveling alone and she had already been groped three times! She slapped each of them and screamed at them but they still didn't seem to think that there was anything wrong with grabbing her. According to our driver, Anil, the majority of Indian men believe that Western women are either prostitutes or will sleep with anyone just for the heck of it. And that's how they treat us.
It's given me a bit of an inferiority complex because I really can't raise my eyes from the ground. An Indian woman will not hold the gaze of a man unless she is a prostitute- that's how the men tell the difference. Well, of course Western women don't automatically look away and often hold their gaze to mean "stop looking at me!". This is another reason that Western women are thought of as prostitutes. Anyway, I've missed quite a few interesting things now because I have to keep looking down (I guess I would have to anyway though since the streets are covered in cow shit). Sean keeps asking me if I noticed something and I never do because I was looking down!
The other odd thing is how affectionate the men are with one another. Sean and I think that this is because they can't show any affection towards women in public (or anywhere else for that matter). There are no girlfriends- a woman is either your sister or your wife. They literally hang all over one another, hold hands, hang on to one another's butts when on motorcycles, etc. Everything that a guy would normally do with his girlfriend, they do with one another. Except kiss- they don't do that. Very different from the Western world.
As terrible as the Indian men are the Indian women are totally the opposite. Every single one that we've met has been very helpful, nice
and immaculately clean (something they should really teach the men how to do). It amazes me that they can keep their beautiful saris clean in all of the dust and grime but they do. Plus their hair and makeup are always perfect and they nearly all wear beautiful jewelry. It's a pretty stark contrast.
No comments:
Post a Comment