An Interesting Day

I have spent the day bumming around Delhi. Its been getting pretty hot in the sun here, so walking around to different tourist sites can be exhausting very quickly. My first stop was Raj Ghat, where a memorial is set up at the spot where Mahatma Gandhi's cremation occurred. It was very somber, and the steady stream of Indians visiting the site reminded me yet again of what a beloved person he is by the Indian public. To see the way he is respected and revered, now over 50 years since his death is very touching. In a way, he is the "Founding Father" of modern India, but he is treated with a much more profound respect than we treat George Washington or Thomas Jefferson with.

Next, I made my way to the Jami Masjid, a Muslim mosque where you can climb one of the minarets (prayer towers) to have a brilliant view of Delhi. That was my primary reason for going, plus it seemed like a cheap thing to do since I am getting into crunch time with my budget now. Well, it was just my luck that I arrived at the time they were closing for noontime prayers, so I had to wait outside for a 1/2 hour before I was allowed in. Thankfully, women aren't allowed in the mosque at that time either and many of them were all to happy to let me wait with them. When I was finally allowed inside, I wandered around for a bit and then made my way to the spot where I could buy a ticket to go up into the tower. I was a tad perturbed to find that I couldn't go up by myself (for safety reasons) so I waited until two Dutch girls came by also wanting to walk up. So we went back to the counter only to find that we still couldn't go up because we needed a man with us. To walk up to the top of the tower. Which was not down some shady alley but standing proudly right in front of us.

Well, we were not in a position to argue so the three of us just decided to wait until some man with his family came along and we figured we would attach ourselves to them. When this finally did happen, we were no yet again and it was explained to us that we needed a FOREIGN man to accompany us. There were none in sight and I was getting VERY irritated with this whole arrangement. The guy at the ticket stand made a big deal about saying "Hindu-Muslim can go together, just not Indian and Foreign", like he was being very generous and open minded about the whole affair. The three of us sat down and started talking about the injustice of it all when, Duh-Duh-Duh-Da!, a FOREIGN man came up to the counter and agreed to be our escort. AND to top it all off, after all of the problems in getting into the tower in the first place, it wasn't that great of an excursion anyway. The view was nice, but the space at the top was so small that you didn't really have time to enjoy it, just snap a few pictures and go back down where you came from.

I have had a lot of difficulties being in India because I was a woman, but none of them had been so blatantly discriminatory as this policy. I mean, for crying out loud I am in India, in Delhi, all by myself. I have handled far harder challenges in my life since I have been here on my own than walking up a stupid freaking tower. If they are questioning my ability to do that, imagine the other things I do on my own that would just astonish them. Not to mention the fact that they were insisting it was for my safety. What safety? I have just as much of a likelihood of getting hassled in the streets as I do getting hassled in the tower. It is just so ridiculous. This major incident is added to all the minor ways in which my femininity and womanhood has been questioned in this country. There have been numerous other small things that are requested of me and happen to me that ever so subtly undermine my status. Things like when I was checking into my hotel in Delhi, the man registering me needed to know the name and address of my father. Or earlier when I would be with one of the MSID guys or another foreign man, and the Indians in the room would ask questions about me to them in English and not ask me directly. That has even happened with Dr. Sharma in Chittor, where Indian men will ask questions to him about me in English while I sit there thinking, "Hello! I have a mouth. I have a brain. Ask me!"

I definitely think this trip is turning me more into a feminist than I ever was before. But maybe that is simply because we, as women in the U.S., really really do have so much more freedom in the world than so many others do. Despite the worries and arguments and more radical feminist statements about the different ways the America and its politics is out to undermine our rights, we have so much more than so many others. My time in India has also convinced me more that it is our duty as women to work to ensure that everyone would have equal rights in all the countries in the world. Who else will fight for them if women don't create an international unified front to say that all of these things are unacceptable?

I have so enjoyed interacting with the women I meet here and using my poor Hindi to communicate with them. This will be a very politically incorrect thing to say, but I imagine that when I ignore the men around me and focus solely on the women, that it gives them a little more legitimacy than they had before. To have this person come all the way from the U.S. to speak with women, I can imagine it would surprise some.

Speaking with women here and watching them with their children, you see how similar the human condition really is. When you boil down to it, I want to have children and raise a family just as much as the women here do. I really feel there is a universality in the experience of women all over the world. And that is an amazing thing to discover.