Our friend Gabe fell out of a tree a few weeks ago and bruised some bone in his ankle and has been on crutches ever since. He's getting the cast off on Monday, and he should be totally fine. It's just sort of a hassle to crutch around New Delhi, especially since sidewalks aren't really a thing here. He and Sarah called me around 1PM and asked if I wanted to join them at the Qutub Minar, which I did. I arrive there an hour later, and I see Gabe standing there on one leg with Sarah. He looks at me and simply says, "I left my crutches in the auto." This is problematic because Gabe cannot walk without crutches right now. He can hobble and he can hop, but walking? Not so much.
Sarah and I went to the ticket counter, leaving the immobile Gabe under a shady tree, and we asked if they had a wheelchair. If you are traveling with a handicapped individual, you will be glad to know that you can get a wheelchair at the Qutub Minar if you need one. In fact, there are many ramps to facilitate the movement of said wheelchair. But cobblestones complicate the whole matter.
We were a sight to behold. One gringo in a wheelchair being wheeled around by two gringas in floral print dresses. There were definitely some curious stares, but there were also some photographs. The three of us were looking at someone's tomb, and a man comes up to Sarah and me and asks, "to take a picture." We both assumed he meant to take a picture of him and his family so Sarah said, "Sure!" And then he tried to shuttle us into the photograph so that we could be in a picture with him. We shook our heads and said no as soon as we realized the misunderstanding.
Another man came up and asked to take a picture, to which I firmly responded, "Nahi!" There were some surreptitious picture takers and some who weren't so sneaky. Gabe, Sarah and I were standing by an iron pole, which does have a deeper significance that I read about on a sign but can't exactly remember right now, and this man, who is standing no more than four feet away, just snaps a picture on his phone. I sort of lost it at this point and just walked up to the man. Sarah told me after the fact that she and Gabe sort of turned away in embarrassment.
"Show me your camera. You just took a photo of us. Show me your camera. Show me the photo. Show me the photo. You took a picture! I saw you just take a photograph of us."
He was pretty sheepish, and at first pretended that his phone didn't have a camera. I kept on insisting though. And when I finally got him to show me the pictures, he said something along the lines of, "No pictures of you. Here. Look." At which point I grabbed his phone and started scrolling through his pictures. Lo and behold, there was a photo of me and Gabe and Sarah. It wasn't a picture that we happened to be in. We were clearly the subjects, with me in the middle, flanked by Gabe and Sarah.
"Delete it. I'm not moving until you delete that photo. Delete it!" He deleted it, and I know he deleted it because I watched him delete it. Then I walked away, wheeling Gabe with me. Gabe's response to my outburst was along the lines of, "You gotta do what you gotta do."
In retrospect, this was maybe not the smartest move on my part. I just want to know what these guys get out of taking photographs of us. Are they going to take them and show them to their friends? Tell them stories about how they totally hooked up with us or something equally absurd? Or are we really that much of a novelty? In any of these cases, it makes me entirely uncomfortable to think that someone is taking my picture without my consent. It makes me feel like an object, like I'm as much of an attraction as the Qutub Minar itself.
But the Qutub Minar was still really cool. I took a lot of pictures of crumbling ruins and intricately carved stone. I did not, however, take photographs of people without their consent because, as we've learned, that's inappropriate and makes people uncomfortable.
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