Solo woman traveller: Indian dangers, Canadian goggles

Crowd gathers to watch my friends at Chowpatty Beach (photo by Kane Ryan)

I met my husband in a Mumbai slum at a Diwali charity event. People always ask if it was love at first sight. For me it was. I looked at him and saw a dark-skinned Gregory Peck in a crisp blue dress shirt and pressed jeans with old-fashioned movie manners and a wide, dimpled smile that could glamour a wailing baby into a shy giggle – I’ve actually seen it happen.

His story of what he thought of me on first glance is usually along the lines of: “Who is this crazy girl travelling India by herself? What is she up to?”
In fact, our relationship developed more out of his concern for my safety than romantic attraction – in the beginning anyway. He gave me the numbers of his relatives in Goa. He made sure I made trains. He messaged me daily. He encouraged me to get a local cell phone. He discouraged me from taking rickshaws at night. He dragged his laptop and work to Bangalore, Calcutta, Varanasi. He made me choose between him and a solo trip to Rishikesh (it was the turning point in our relationship).
Did this raise my thick feminist brows? Yes. Did this ruffle my independent, female feathers? Yes. Did this flatter my archaic romantic sensibilities? Yes – but in a somewhat ashamed and conflicted way.
After a few months in India, I started to clue in. It wasn’t just him who was worried it was every Indian I met. I seemed to be living two travel tales; the thrilling, adventurous exchange between fellow backpackers (many of whom were single women from developed countries) and the aggressive, flamboyant warnings of locals to stay in after dark (“you’ll get groped”), stay away from Delhi (“you’ll get fleeced”), find a friend (“male and a relative, preferably”), or go to a five-star (“where there are many foreigners”). I started to notice things – news articles, friends’ stories, my own experiences – that told me I’d been gravely naïve in my travelling mindset. Eat, Pray, Love-like fantasies were tinged with unexpected fear and anger for myself and other women.

In light of the recent attention being paid to rape and the harassment of women in India, I thought I’d share a few of my personal thoughts and experiences for the consideration of any friends worried about travelling there – especially the ladies.

While India can be a safe and wonderful place for women travelling alone it is not without serious risks. Being a woman is a different game there. Period. I spent the majority of my time with Indian women, from slum dwellers and villagers to young professionals and middle-class housewives. For a 33-year-old single traveler like me, acknowledging the dangers we all faced (of varying degrees) and adjusting to it was both painful and humbling.

Every morning, along with nearly a billion other people, I read the Times of India newspaper. As a news reporter, I was at first (yes, grotesquely) enthralled by the amount of bizarre crime stories: Acid assaults, ritual killings, and the proliferation of openly criminal politicians.

But I generally glazed over an abundance of vague and brief stories about eve-teasing. Sounds kind of fun right? Not quite. Eve-teasing is a jargony way of downplaying sexual harassment and assault, often very serious cases like rape and beatings.

One morning I read about a 19-year-old Swedish tourist taken into the bushes and raped by two rickshaw drivers on the same route I’d argued with my husband (then boyfriend) that I should take alone a few nights before.

A few days later the story of a woman in Calcutta, who was lured by a job offer, brutally raped and left for dead, garnered national attention. Not because it was horrific but mostly because West Bengal minister Mamta Banerjee – yes, a woman – claimed the story was fabricated to malign her government. Savvy detectives proved her wrong and nearly lost their jobs in doing so. The majority of the debate surrounding this story was, similar to the Delhi case, about what women should do to avoid rape.

In fact, here’s a long-story-short with a disturbing zinger. An afternoon outing with women and children from the slum a friend works in went awry when we lost a four-year-old girl. Kum kum wandered out of the amusement park, past a security guard and into the chaotic streets of Mumbai. Luckily, a kind man on a bike who looks for lost children turned her into the police station. As we walked out of the station, my friend was in shock over a t-shirt one of the detectives was wearing. It said: Help stop rape – Consent.

Men are everywhere in India. Everywhere. On more than one occasion, I was stopped by groups of them to take a picture. Not me kindly taking a picture for them – as I first assumed – but me taking a picture with them or being asked to pose for them. This got freaky real quick.

The first time I was groped was in Goa. I was walking home from dinner in Calangute with two Egyptian girls I met at my guesthouse. A young man rode by on a bicycle and grabbed my bottom. I was so shocked and embarrassed I just laughed politely like a good Canadian. The Egyptian women lost it, screaming and swearing bloody murder. They were used to this kind of thing and to fighting back.

The second time I was alone, in Bangalore. I was on my way back to the ashram after a beautiful bharatanatyam dance class. The scent of fresh jasmine and frangipani hung thick as the banyan canopies. I was so lost in love with my thoughts of India I paid no attention to the boy on the bicycle coming towards me. Emboldened by the sight of my arms full with bags he went for a full breast grope. No words. I walked on, blushing, smaller than a nutmeg on the side of the road.

I met some incredible female travelers on yoga retreats, cultural adventures, personal emancipation journeys and plain getaways. Their boldness was admirable, inspiring and sometimes plain dumb-lucky.

Take the Italian woman I met in Bangalore, Michaela. She was THE cliché: Dreadlocks, hammer pants, prayer beads, mehndi and even a bindhi. On her first trip to India, she lived with a family in a northern village and drank the unfiltered water they did. Hospital. Six months. Nearly died.

On her second trip, she took a private charter bus through a washed out mountain road in monsoon season. It crashed. Nearly died.

On her third trip, all of her things were stolen in Mumbai. Rupee and passport-less, she accepted an offer to stay with legless beggar in the most-dangerous slum. She did. For two weeks.

I took her shopping to a locals mall for cheap kurtas and, facing a lack of dressing rooms, she ripped off her shirt to try one on. No bra. Dumb-lucky.

In Varanasi, the cleaner at our hotel ranted at me and my husband about the young hippie women wandering the ghats drunk and on drugs, looking for gurus and easily duped by perverts dressed as spiritual healers. He was really upset. He wanted us to talk to them.

The risks for good-paying travelers, female or otherwise, are nothing compared to those most Indian women face every day. But they are there. It’s important for us to take off our ‘western’ goggles and feel the discomfort of fear and danger sometimes. There’s no shame in understanding, it’s the root of compassion and the beginning of change.

My hope is that the tragic rape and brutal murder of the young woman in Delhi continues to fuel awareness and change for India, with the support of women and men all around the world.

My husband visited Canada for the first time this past Christmas. He said he was surprised and happy to see women in so many public places; working, enjoying, independent, safe. For the first time he felt OK with stints of us being separated, knowing I was in here. “This is beautiful,” he told me. “This is how it should be for every woman.”

 

Hampi pilgrims want a snap with the tourist

Not to be left out ladies

From Bombay, with love ...

 From Bombay, with love: My time with the Dirty Wall Project in Saki Naka slum community, Mumbai

We step out of the autorickshaw onto the side of a dust, traffic and waste-filled road. The people, dogs and cars move around each other like notes in a symphony that miraculously do not collide – at least not as often as you’d think. The brown veil of pollution hangs low, intensifying every shallow breath, sweet and sour scent to this newcomer’s senses. We follow a clearing through a garbage dump of sorts and come upon the entrance to the Saki Naka slum community in the Andheri East area of Mumbai.... Read the full post on the Dirty Wall Project website: http://dirtywallproject.com/blog/?p=2721&pid=image-1392

THE LABOUR OF LEAVING

I’m laying on a bed watching my newborn nephew squirm and stare like a little shrimp with wide inky eyes, not yet quite part of this world, a tiny fish plucked from the water. We’re in the home I grew up in and helped build, in the room where my father spent his last days just over eight years ago. Today would have been his 60th birthday, so we’re baking a cake – angel food, obviously.
Here I am again, listening intently for another’s breath and heartbeat. This one is so small yet strong. He is his grandfather’s namesake, David, born on his father’s 30th birthday – a breath of life and joy in a family that’s seen too much loss and sorrow in the past 10 years.
I am reminded, bitterly, of the days and weeks spent in this room, slipping in and out of sleep as I watched my father die from cancer. I remember the endless episodes of Law and Order, reading him the Lee Valley tools catalogue, massaging his swollen feet and the ever-present soundtrack of CBC radio.
I remember sitting vigil for days when he first slipped out of consciousness. I dozed off and awoke to find him gone – literally, not there. The bed was empty. Confusion and panic ensued. His slippers were also gone. Could someone barely 100-lbs, on intravenous morphine, who hadn’t spoken or woke for three days just get up and take off? Apparently, yes.
Dad had an abrupt second wind and seeing me asleep took advantage of his chance to escape. It was Saturday, you see, perhaps his last. This meant it might be his last chance ever to hit a garage sale. We found him trucking down our street, coming from the multi-family, cul-de-sac yard sale a block away, with a ‘90s Casio keyboard and various trinkets in tow. I have no idea where he got cash. He was eccentric, defiant and amusing to the end.
I am reminded of the labour of death. The waiting, the pain, the love, the unabashed humour about bodily functions and frailties. The fear and taking over of inevitable physical change. The departure. The arrival. Is the labour of death not so different from the labour of birth?
Change of any kind is laborious, especially when the focus is on the endings – of a life, a love, a career, a path.
Cultural mythologist Joseph Campbell said. “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
He also said, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
This is why change is so hard – it breaks us. When, and if, we’re able to put ourselves together do we become “stronger in our broken places,” as Hemingway suggests?
Leonard Cohen sings: “There is a crack in everything/That’s where the light gets in.”
And if it doesn’t get in do we remain broken, static in our shadowy traumas, surges of fear lashing in our bellies like live wires?
This is the journey, the individual adventure.
The decision to take a one-year sabbatical from my job as a newspaper reporter stemmed equally from opportunity and physical exhaustion. I’ve sometimes compared Island life to Calypso’s Isle in Ulysses, a sensual womb of comforts and support at its best and a stagnating time warp at its worst. As hard as it is to leave, even for a short while, it can only be best.
This year is as much for professional development as it is personal. Courses, conferences and fellowships are being considered. But a more experiential form of learning calls first. This stems from an interest in how people receive and share information that matters most and what new forms of storytelling emerge.
After only a week back in my hometown Sechelt, I’m reminded of the intriguing travel of news in small communities. Stories break with “Did you hear?” at the mall, the hardware store, in grocery parking lots. A few graphs in the local rag or even the big-city dailies can’t compare to the build and unraveling of personal connections, detail and emotional responses to tragedies or hot issues.
It’s good to immerse yourself in new communities every now and then – especially for a journalist. We spend our working lives gathering intimate details about others in short intense exchanges to invite interest, dialogue and change – yet we strive to maintain an emotional distance to be objective, to get the job done.
When the distancing seeps into your personal life is when it’s time to change, to challenge perspective.
Tomorrow, I’ll leave for Amsterdam to meet a dear friend from journalism school. One week later, I’ll leave for India – I’m not sure for how long or what exactly will unfold. I am fortunate to arrive in Mumbai and spend time with a Victoria friend, Kane Ryan, his parents, and the Dirty Wall Project – a charity supporting one of the many slum communities with the mantra “See a need and fill it.” For the past year I’ve followed Kane’s blog, http://dirtywallproject.com/blog/, a frank, earnest and visually stunning portrayal of his work, colleagues and community.
I plan to connect with a certain newspaper night security guard, who works two jobs to support his family in Victoria and a rural school in Northern India, as well as a high school friend of my father’s who left Canada to become a Hari Krishna in the ‘70s and work with inner city kids in Bangalore.
One of the most-difficult items to leave will be my laptop, which I’m trading for a moleskine notebook – where poems and drawings will replace tweets and third-person status updates…. Until an internet café calls – which I’m sure it will often.


Yours,


Sarah