India - take a picture

When I lived in Bolivia, and later Nicaragua, I had this strange feeling that my blue eyes could bore holes into people. I had this idea that they were beacons of light that shone out of my face and were noticeable from across the room. But my glacial blue gaze was nothing compared to the intensity of the stares that M and I got in India.

There are signs posted in tourist attractions that chide people for teasing or taking pictures of people without asking permission. I thought this was aimed at American tourists who might want to take pictures of monks or the flocks of women in colorful dress... but no, it's because the flocks of women in colorful dress try to take pictures of the pasty white tourists in khaki. The signs don't specify that you must receive permission of course. So even after receiving a "no"to their queries M and I had many photos taken of us. So many that we considered charging 100 rupees per.

We brainstormed ways to avoid getting our pictures taken:

1. say no
2. stick your tongue out in every snap
3. pull your hat down, cover your face, turn your back, or otherwise obscure the view
4. charge money
5. say, in Tamil or Hindu or Urdu or Telegu, "I'm so glad you want to take picture with little old albino me."
6. have a bodyguard yell at people
7. pretend you are deaf or mentally challenged
8. take their phone/camera and run
9. flash them boob
10. speak only in Quechua or Romani or other obscure/potentially made-up language
11. kick them in the balls

After a day at the caves, we stopped at Bibi-Ka-Maqbara a palace and mausoleum built in 1650 for Aurangzeb's dead wife a la the Taj Majal. For some reason there were hordes of teenaged boys trying to take our photos. We tried 1, 7, 10 and enlisted T in 6. At first he was resistant but he soon blossomed into a very good yeller. 

Perhaps because I'm a delicate flower and star of many unwanted photo, it was determined at one point that I was too dainty to use a squat toilet. At a roadside restaurant, I was stopped from approaching the outhouse by Auntie with the admonition that I "wouldn't like it," I almost knocked her down in my insistence that if she didn't let me use it I would pee myself...well not really, I'd just squat elsewhere. People would have definitely snapped photos of that.