Agra special edition

my Indian family

'it's my lucky day'

I experienced the absolute highlight of the trip during our sunset visit to the Taj. As we had visited all of the structures in the morning and took a ton of pictures our plan was just to soak in the Taj – plus there were quite a few people here which I have to admit I don’t love. We were just sitting on a bench looking at the Taj when a couple of kids approached a woman from our group who was hanging out on a bench next to ours and asked her for a photo. Their parents wanted them to pose with her for a photo. Chris and I found this cute and amazing as it seemed that they were fascinated with her ‘whiteness’ and ‘foreignness’. Initially I was sceptical thinking they ‘wanted’ something from her. Unfortunately most of what we experience of the Indian people being as insulated on this tour is the beggars and hawkers that swarm us as we get off buses. All they wanted was for her to pose for a photo with them. So, they snuggled in around her and their parents took photos of them and her, and she gave them her camera and the parents took the same photos with her camera. This went on with various combinations of the kids for 10 minutes or so.

Then…they wanted photos with Chris and me. Really it seemed that they wanted me and weren’t interested in Chris. The boy of the family who seemed about 8 approached me and asked ‘hi auntie, one photo?’ By now my suspicions had faded and I was happy to pose for the photos. Chris and I posed at first, but then it was obvious that they weren’t interested in Chris so he became the photographer. I must have posed for 20 photos with the kids when the 3 adult women with the group wanted their photos taken. OK…no problem…more photos were taken. Other than ‘auntie, one photo?’ there was really no language communication. They were fascinated to see themselves on my digital camera. It was pretty obvious that they had never seen a digital camera. It also didn’t seem like they had much experience with photos at all. They never smiled in any of them until I asked them to. I compare them to North American kids of even 3 years who will ham it up for the camera. I took a ton of photos of them and showed them after each one – it was so much fun. Then a boy and girl of about 15 asked if they could have a photo and the boy sat with me. I put my hand on his shoulder for the photo and he responded with: ‘This is my lucky day!’ That caused me to laugh and laugh and laugh. This was the best experience of our entire cruise and to be honest one of the best experiences of my entire travelling life.