A canoe, at last.

14 June
I'm always joking around that humankind should use the canoe as a more frequent mode of transportation. And today, I did! My backwater cruise around Alleppey was on a canoe carved from a tree trunk, with a coconut leaf covered roof. Very peaceful and relaxing (i.e. kinda boring) trip through canals and lakes for 6 hours, seeing villages alongside. I saw a few water snakes, lots of kingfisher birds, and occasionally I'd get excited, thinking there was a crocodile ahead, but it was always just a broken coconut shell. Lots of goats and chickens, women doing laundry by beating clothes against stones, people bathing in their bathing-clothes--sarongs worn for modesty, and the washing goes on underneath (there's a great line in Shantaram about over-underclothes for public washing, haha), school kids yelling "one pen! one pen!", motor boats pulling chains of canoes behind, and the occasional other tour boat with Indian tourists waving at me. Such an idyllic setting- again, worlds and worlds from Bombay. (Except for the condoms I saw in the water. Did you know that condoms float?)

But on the flipside, the night before, after my last entry, a young local guy, Dr. Vijay, tried to "make good friendship" with me, and it made me tres uncomfortable. I'm used to the usual "where are you from, miss, madam please your good name, how is India" yada yada, but this guy was just really persistent and pushy. He wanted my number and my email address- he was at the same internet place and actually wrote me a note and dropped it into my cube after the first time I told him I wouldn't give him my info pleading for it, saying that he wants to help me because people will try to cheat me as a foreigner in India. I relented and gave him my email, and then he wrote me a message there asking again for my friendship and offering his services. I decided that maybe I was being too hard on him, despite the fact that he repeatedly stood looking over my shoulder while I was typing, and tried to sit down with me in the cube. Anyway we went to dinner, and he started asking me the typical questions "are you married, do you have a boyfriend" which then led into questions about my sexual activity and am I having sex before marriage and if I'm 25 then I must be having sex because of my- get this- hormonal secretions?!?! I told him that was inappropriate in my country to ask, and also here, and tried to change the subject. Then he kept on asking to come to my hotel, or if I would come to his room. I made up a story that my friends Erin and Batya (haha, thanks for the alibi, guys) were sick back at the hotel and I had to go be with them again. He walked me back to the hotel, which was good because I wasn't sure where I was going, but also a bit creepy. Luckily I made a fine escape, but the whole experience just left me unsettled. There's got to be some sort of balance between curiosity and crossing the line. Do men like this seriously think that just because I'm a western woman I'll have sex with anything that moves? I have a hard time understanding a culture that has held onto arranged marriages, modesty, restraint, etc, that also allows for this kind of behaviour. Maybe, actually, it's reactionary. Maybe the men are so sexually repressed they seek release in the form of white women? Whatever it is, I might be able to understand it some how, but I certainly don't like it, and I wish I knew a better way to handle it.

What's particularly upsetting about this sort of experience is that my inner racist rears her ugly head. While walking with Dr. Vijay we passed two young white men, and I immediately felt relieved just to see them on the other side of the street- like they could protect me if he went to far. Of course, they are not necessarily any more likely to help me than any one else, foreign or Indian, but on some instinctual level I just feel better when I see foreigners. Why is it that I feel more connected to white foreigners than Indians, even if they are not American? Ok, so we use the same kind of toilets at home and share some values, but that doesn't mean they are automatically trustworthy or reliable people.

An American friend of mine in Mumbai once commented that the only Indians who have any sort of reasoning skills are the ones who speak English well. I recoiled when I heard him say that, thinking it was so racist. But I'm ashamed to admit that I can come up with plenty of supporting evidence that shows that English speakers generally are more competent and helpful people. So does that make me racist, too? It's a stereotype, and I suppose that many stereotypes are based in some sort of truth. The problem is when we start using them to make blanket judgments.

Before I left for India I scoffed at the guidebooks' recommendations for backpacker hangouts with western food, thinking that going to those places and eating that food defeats the entire purpose of being here. But... now that I'm here, it's nice to treat myself to pasta or pizza once in a while, and it's easier to have a conversation with a foreigner at a restaurant than an Indian. Maybe it just comes down to a sense of birds of a feather flocking together, but I still fundamentally find trouble with it.

In brighter news- thanks to all of you readers for the shout-outs! Keep 'em coming. ;-)