What the ...??? BAM!

Remember when I said I had a story to share about standing out in India? The time has come to share it. Mainly because I had one too many flaming shots last night and moving from my bed right now sounds nothing short of death-like.

Last weekend I ventured to Bangalore, India's high-tech hub and the location in which your call gets routed when you're trying to figure out why the heck your operating system just stopped working. They may say their name is George or Fred or Nancy, but if you detect a hint of an Indian accent, it's more likely their name is something unpronounceable to you, the confused American consumer of all that are goods.

So I went to Bangalore with 3 other girls, 2 of us blond, 3 of us well over the average Indian women's height, and all of us white. Whenever we're in the car, we are stared at so blatantly by other people in surrounding cars that staring back just seems pointless. Buses of men craned their necks to look at us. A father excitedly points us out to his family. Others just stare and shake their heads, as though we've each got 5 ourselves. But the dude who wins the prize for "Most Dedicated Stare" is the one who was SO distracted by our presence that he got hit by a rickshaw. An auto-rickshaw. He wasn't hurt or anything, just more startled and confused, I think. Now before you go and think I'm making nothing out of a huge deal, let me just say this: It's not a huge deal. Here's why:
Traffic is an absolute mess in Bangalore, and when I say mess I don't mean that I-25 is backed up past 120th, no. I mean mess as in the cow in the road just caused us to swerve, which in turn caused the family of 4 on the motorcycle next to us (with an infant on the handlebars) to nearly collide with the oncoming traffic on either side of us, cutting within inches of the public transit bus that's holding at LEAST double its capacity, with about 6 men literally hanging outside the door of the bus with one foot on the step and a hand fiercely gripping the metal railing. Horns are honking. Rain is pouring. Streets are flooded. This is all very normal.

So when you put it into that context, it all seems a bit more comical than it does horrifying. I also want to make the point that the staring thing, it's not as offensive as I'm making it out to be. It's not considered rude here, and now that I'm used to it I'm only bothered by situations in which the 2 guys at the neighboring table speak little more than a few words to each other, because the rest of their entire 1.5 hour meal they've got their heads turned toward us, obviously hearing our every discussion and not at all concerned that this might be uncomfortable, or at the very least, super awkward. Honestly, though, if seeing foreigners were such a rarity to me, I would be curious, too.