As Karen walked through the streets of Jaipur, she was
conscious of the stares following her each and every stride. This was not new
to her, she had experienced the extra attention, from men and women
of India, the minute she had stepped out of the airport.
She remembered her friend Atul, warning her, “if you want to
visit India alone, let me tell you it is not a place for a single white woman.”
Karen had heard so many beautiful things about India, the
place, the colours, the culture and the cuisine; that Atul’s warning seemed more
like a desperate attempt to keep her back home in Milwaukee, during its
merciless winters.
She knew that it was now or never, she had finally saved up
enough money to backpack through the world’s no.1 exotic destination.
Karen shook herself off her thoughts and decided to put Atul
in the back burner for now. The streets with names that she couldn’t
possibly pronounce, were calling out to her. She dived inside a busy market
place in Central Jaipur and then took a left and a right and a left and a right
again, with hawkers calling out to her, selling beautiful trinkets at 10
dollars a piece.
The market was infinite, and Karen was determined to find
out what lay right in the end.
As she reached what looked like the deepest part of this
colourful maze, the shops dwindled and all that remained were garbage cans with odd stalls here and there.
That’s when, in Karens head, the warning bells started
tinkling. It was dark, the lane was practically empty. To make matters worse, she
had no clue how many lefts and rights she had taken.
She looked around to see dark men, smoking what they called
a bidi, silently staring at her, when she felt something sharp poke her back and a stinking breath near
her ears say,
“You are alone and far away from home, white girl!”
