“It was interesting how the group at certain times really turned against Indians and there was a time when a few of us got frustrated with Indians and there were real racist tendencies that came out, in me and others. People would start making derogatory jokes when we were by ourselves. It was amazing how that otherness would draw out the worst in some people, including myself. You find yourself getting angry, impatient and angry with Indians and we talked about that and that whole dimension of how people responded to India in ways that we really hadn’t anticipated. You know you study it and say, “Oh, this is wonderful and it’s interesting” and then you actually hit the reality of it and a lot of it you’re not comfortable with and in fact it repels you.

Well there was the obvious, of dealing with the beggar in the street and that, but there’s also just constantly, the peddlers hustling to sell you this or that, people cheating you. You’re obviously a Westerner, you obviously have money and resources, and so you’re an opportunity to make their day. And being hustled all the time, after a while it got to be irritating. At one point we were in a very westernized restaurant in Delhi maybe like two months into the trip and sitting around and people were telling Indian jokes and we’re all laughing and Dale and I thought about it afterwards that that was amazing. If these had been African-Americans we’d been talking about we would, you know, be outraged at that kind of interaction, and yet people have been out in Indian society dealing with the beggars and the hustlers and so this built up hostility and revulsion, it just sort of like spilled out at this lunch, and I remember afterwards Dale and I saying, “Wow. Where did that come from?”

There were a lot of Indian men in their teens and early twenties that were sort of affecting a Western sophistication and it just seemed very inauthentic and it was grating. You’d meet someone in the village or you’d meet someone that was in a more traditional role and you could respect that. But those somewhat urbanized–we had a derogatory term for them that someone in the group came up with. I can’t remember what it was.

–Wynne Carvill '71