White.

I had hardly touched my feet to Indian soil when struck with a sudden and overwhelming realization, one I knew with no concise awareness until this surreal moment: I am white.

For twenty-five years, this didn’t seem an issue to concern myself with. I come from a colorful country, an eclectic mixture of accents, heritages, and religions. A place where we are all merely one strain in the fusion of many. Never in my life have I known a real minority, let alone so blatantly been one that it struck even me as strange. I’d entered a new world, one in which I felt alien in my own shoes.

I have an innate curiosity towards people, and have found that at home I can sit for hours just observing people, inventing in my mind stories of who they might be and what is the reason they’re in that exact place, with their company, at that moment. I notice body language, facial expressions, interactions, and tone of voice. At home, I can carry on such observations inconspicuously, as I am just an invisible one of many.

Suddenly, everything I do is seen. Every move I make is observed, critiqued, questioned, noted. I am a minority, one so extreme that wide eyes are never absent, wherever I turn.

My first real contact with India was the day a trainee was delivered to my office to begin a month’s training- “knowledge transfer” they called it, creating an image in my mind of flashing lights and beeping noises coming from a massive machine in a sterile room, while wires connected my brain to hers and would leave me a Stepford Wife. The first thing she said to me, in broken English: “Your eyes are so blue. I have never seen blue eyes.” Thus began my own awareness of my traits that have never been anything but ordinary.

And now, standing in a filthy and overcrowded airport, it isn’t my eyes that are making me feel exposed and vulnerable, as though I’ve found myself with a target pinned to my shirt at the wrong end of a shooting range.

Having located my taxi, I’m faintly relieved to have the first step of finding my way to safety accomplished. However, as the driver veers from what appears to be a main road, into an unlit dirt road, the relief dissipates. It is the middle of the night, the alley we’re puttering through is narrow, abandoned but for some lurking men sitting in the middle of the road, their motorbikes strewn to the side. We turn a few corners, steering around men and dogs, cattle and goats, but appear to have driven the same alley three or four times. My imagination plays out traumatizing scenarios, in which the driver turns me over to these discomforting middle-of-the-night loiterers.


Resuming travel on a more main road, I’m given an awkward explanation of the new road that has been built, including overpasses and exits unfamiliar, causing confusion. One deep breath is all I’m allotted, before we are waved over by the police. Their flashlights turn from my driver to me; they shout in Tamil, all speaking at the same time, waving their arms abrasively. I regret having the knowledge I do of India’s corrupt and brutal police force, functioning on bribery and deception.

At the hotel now, my role changes. I am not an invader. I am a princess. I am royalty. My heels clack down long marble hallways, taking me to a room where starched white sheets on my lush king size bed are changed daily; fresh flowers are delivered along with fresh squeezed guava juice every morning. I receive courtesy Swedish massages (ironic, as they’re administered by Thai girls, in India.) Every employee I see- and there is certainly an abundance- folds hands, bows heads, smiles widely, and behaves as though I somehow deserve such red carpet treatment. I often think that I would rather be in that back alley in the middle of the night, than to be treated with such humble servitude.

The office where we spend our days requires that, in order to use a washroom, one must pass through a room the size of a football field, crammed full of cubicles, each cubicle seating four people. While I pass through I fake oblivion as all heads raise, all chins turn, all eyes are on me. They follow me like goldfish. How odd it is to feel unnatural in one's own skin. The Ladies Washroom, it seems, is the only place these timid and silent women will chat with animation- but only until they notice my entrance. All freeze and stare blatantly, suddenly mute, backing themselves against the walls. Working night shifts, I often walk in to find the cleaning staff, the "lower class" who speak no English, squatting on the floor or lying asleep on the cold tile floors under bathroom sinks. It is to these women that I seem the most foreign, it is these ones who hide their faces from me or leave altogether.

Not only my appearance, but every detail of my life is foreign and shocking. All day long I am quizzed. They are appalled that, unmarried, I no longer live with my parents or even a sibling, but on my own. In fact, they find the fact the I am unmarried and without children the most disheartening. They think it drab how little jewelry I wear, how little sparkle and jangle and shimmer. They’re confused about the stud in my nose, which indicates singleness, offsetting the ring on my toe, indicating marriage. They want me to wear more color; in fact they want nothing more than to see me in a sari. I am enthralled to know about their lives outside the office, but cannot seem to get the topic off of myself and the unceasing line of questioning.

What a peculiar state of being. I am an intruder. I am white, and how strange it is that this is strange.