Scandalous

We spent the last four nights in a town called Palwal. At night, most foreigners were driven back to the hotel, but some slept out in the field with the marchers. This town has a reputation for rogue men who actually harm women.

Two French women slept with the Tamil group they had been travelling with. While asleep, some local men came near them and started saying things like, Which one will you take? I can take that one faster than you. etc.

The Tamil men heard this talk and got worried. They did not raise a fist when their own marchers were killed in the traffic accident. They were unlikely to come to the girls' rescue if they were attacked in their sleep. So these men stayed awake all night, keeping watching over the girls, and telling the local men to go away.

In the morning, the Tamil men asked the French girls to sleep in the hotel with other foreigners from now on as they would like to get some sleep too. So now women are asked not to sleep on the road now that we are so close to Delhi. Sounds like it's always the suburban young who make trouble everywhere.

In the town of Palwal, we too had our own incidents. I was standing in front of the hotel with three others. One French man was leaving the march as his time was up. We were standing with him to wait for the car. Francoise, a 55-year-old women wanted to exchange e-mail addresses with the French man. Before we knew what was happening, a crowd of over 30 gathered around us. One local man thrust out his notepad, hoping Francoise would put her e-mail address in it. When she ignored him, he marched through the foreigners in the most brusque way, bumping me in the arm.

The younger boys in the crowd started putting out their hands to touch us. Another local man pushed his friend into Francoise, making her fall back into me. The hotel manager came out and sent us back into the laneway of the hotel.

A while later, Francoise headed out with others in an attempt to get some dinner. A car drove up to her fast and stopped just short of hitting her. The people around thought it was funny and laughed. I joined them at that moment. But we were told by others the restaurant we wanted was now closed as it was past 9 pm.

That's when our translators came along, returning from dinner. One said to me, It's dark now, what are you doing out? I said, Looking for dinner. He said, You shouldn't be out. Do you see other women on the street? The men harass them so they don't come out. You are a foreigner, they will bother you more.

So we all retreated into the hotel and had dinner on their rooftop restaurant. Surprisingly, the food was quite good, though each dishes still indistinguishable to me as they taste like various blends and strengths of curry with mystery vegetables and starch.

The next night, we headed out to the restaurant again. I saw a man behind the counter throwing chopped vegetables in a pan and frying that up with handfuls of white strings he also threw in. Even though I had no idea what was being made, I said to our guide, I want that for dinner. I figured as long as it's not saucy curry with potato, I want it. Wouldn't you know they brought me a plate of chow mein. It was so good! So the first time I had an opportunity to eat non-curry, I had Chinese food.