To be a western guy in India is an experience that can be difficult to explain sometimes. I am not the first foreigner writing about it. No one is ever the first one doing anything in Mumbai. Or anywhere now days for that matter. It has all already happened before whatever it is. But I have to write about it. Not only is everything so different and unusual here compared to the western world that you are constantly distracted by all these impressions and sometimes confused. I also get a lot of attention for that I look different. People always notice me. People always see what I do. And I can hardly do anything in a way that is normal here. It takes some time to adjust. It’s getting better now when I have spent between three and four month here during the latest year. I remember when I first got here I could hardly cross a street. There is constant traffic and I can’t just walk out the street and stop the cars. They would hit me, I thought. But after a while I noticed that’s what people do here. That’s what you have to do and nobody wants to hit a person. It might be an annoying thing but it is the same for everyone anyway. And again, they will definitely notice me since I am tall and white. Most people drive extra careful when they see a foreigner trying to cross. I also get a lot of smiles and nice greetings from people that I meet. They seem to be very impressed by westerners. People get up to me just to shake hand. People on the street that I don’t know are giving hi-five and saying words like “yeah maan!! Looking cool!” I always try to be grateful about it. The only thing I feel is questionable about it is probably the fact that none of these people actually know who I am. It would have felt better if I got all this confirmation for who I am instead of just how I look. I would have loved it if people adored my work or anything that I have done that I can be proud of. Just being a western guy is not really something I can take pride in since it is not an achievement or anything that is at all depending on myself or what I do. And that is probably why I sometimes find myself struggling with the gratefulness for all this attention. And after a while it can be a little tiering to always have peoples eyes on me. To constantly being noticed and watched whatever I do is not something I am used to or have ever asked for. The Indian people are sometimes not at all worried about that they can be bothering, even if they most of the time of course not intend to be. For example they would stare and not even look away when you show that you have noticed them staring. While at restaurants or cafés I see people leaning there head in their hand palms and resting their eyes on me in pleasure. It has been occasions when I have been sitting at a café working by my computer and when I look up I see that every single person in the room are staring at me. Some people are nervously coming up and want to talk to me but don’t really have anything to say.. It happens that people come up to me asking if we can take a selfie. Usually I am fine with that but sometimes when I am busy or not in the mood for it I just walk on, I feel bad for it sometimes. I can only hope that I don’t seem too arrogant. 

When I came in to an Indian friend of mines house just to visit him one day and to see how he lives, I was greeted by rejoicing. His flat mates were so happy to have a foreigner visiting that they could not recover. They got me a chair, a plate of food and asked a thousand questions. Also in the staircase on my way down after the visit, there were a bunch of kids following me and laughing around the corners. 

But sometimes people are doing not so nice things in order to get my attention also. It could be things like blocking me where I am trying to walk just to get in my way or shouting at me to get my attention. One Saturday night when I went out of my house a few days after I had just arrived in Mumbai for the third time. People were shouting at me from across the street to come over to them. They were shouting in a way as if they were convinced that I wanted to come and hang out with them. They kept on shouting louder and louder as if they didn’t understand that I was ignoring them on purpuse. I was busy. The annoying thing in this situation was that after one group of people started to shout after me another group of people on the other side of the street also started to shout at me. Well, it was Saturday night I remember, so let’s hope their stupid behavior was because they were drunk. Which is unlikely since Indian people rarely drink that much, but they could have been just carried away by the fact that it was Saturday night and that they were out partying.