There’s a scene in Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s the one in the beginning, when Will Turner sees Elizabeth coming down the majestic spiral staircase of the governor’s mansion. She is dressed in a beautiful new green gown. From the tight laces of her corset to the perfect symmetry of her high cheekbones and pouted lips, everything about her is grace and beauty. But what really makes the scene is Will. His face when he sees her seems completely wiped blank, as if she’s stripped him of all his worries, thoughts of his responsibilities. You can see it in his eyes: all that matters, in that moment, is Elizabeth.
My high school mascot was the pirate, so naturally I loved that movie. I was obsessed with it for a while, and watched it more times than it’s healthy to watch a movie. But then, as such loves go, I knew it so well I became sick of it. I haven’t seen it in years, and only began to think of it again when I got to India.
Imagine that scene happening to you hundreds of times a day. Because for a foreigner girl, that’s how it is in India. When I walk down to the fruit seller to buy pomegranates for breakfast, there he inevitably is: the Indian Will Turner, on his bike, whose head seems to do a full 180° turn to keep watching me (I keep forgetting to ask Virendra-ji how to say “to crash,” as in “If you keep looking at me, you’re going to crash”).
Paan sellers see me passing in a rickshaw and stop rolling their leaves of tobacco to stare. Boys engaged in animated conversation stop, open-mouthed, when they see me. Some hit their friends to make them turn around and see the angrezi.
My home stay sister and I were riding home from the market one day, and she was shocked by all the boys staring. “They act as if they never saw a foreigner before!” she said, scandalized.
One guy made a loud feline noise as we passed him. Another barked. “This city’s like a zoo!” I joked to Priyanka. “There are cats, and dogs…”
“And especially boys,” she said.
In the past three months, I’ve gotten used to my surroundings. I don’t gape at the women carrying large sacks of rice on their heads, or the men selling squares of dried mango on the corner. But I’m slowly coming to terms with the truth: they’ll never get used to me.
