Making local friends here has been a little more difficult than I originally bargained for, exacerbated both by the inherent shyness of Indian college students, and by my somewhat isolated position living in a homestay that isn't within walking distance of campus, especially not at night. While some of my fellow study abroad students have become great friends of mine, the past month I've still felt rather lonely. Coming from GW, where I am extremely involved in numerous student organizations and where the campus community is a huge part of my everyday life, the transition to a campus with very few active organizations and more than a few barriers to meeting local students in a way that fostered friendship was taking its toll on me.
However, my luck turned around completely when my Indian Art History course finally started for the semester. An art history major myself, I was suddenly thrust into the School of Fine Arts, surrounded by other art historians and artists, most of whom happened to have just moved to Hyderabad from cities over a thousand kilometers away. Like me, they were creative, shy, nervous, a little disoriented, and eager to find a home and a community in their new environment. Rather than gawking at me -- the strange, possibly dangerous, foreign creature -- wide-eyed from a safe distance across the room like nearly all of my other classmates had, these students approached me timidly but willingly, sitting next to me and introducing themselves in uncertain English, or waving at me and sending shy but warm smiles from a few rows down.
One of them, a perfect vision of an art student with his retro aviator eyeglasses, tiny gold earring in one ear, mismatched plaid-and-stripes outfit, and a thick mop of wavy black hair, even invited me to audit a Philosophy of Art class with him and his friend. I regrettably had to decline as I was headed for a class in the foreign students' building, and I wouldn't even get his name till much later, but his quirky appearance, casual tone, and forwardness was incredibly refreshing on a campus teeming with cautious, closed-off faces. I grinned when saying goodbye, knowing that given time, we would be friends.
My excitement at finding my place among the art students, however, was a little too strong. I soon learned that despite their more open, friendly attitude, they were all still Indians living in Indian society,governed by Indian social norms -- my eagerness to smile, introduce myself, follow them around their art studios could be read in a completely different way than my American mind intended. But by the time I realized this, it was already too late. While studying in the lobby of the Social Sciences building one morning, a classmate I didn't know too well from my anthropology class asked me to watch his laptop while he went to the restroom. Upon returning he asked my name and said a sentence or two about class, eventually asking if he could friend me on Facebook. My neutral response of "Sure" led to a stream of insistent messages over the next two weeks asking what I was up to, how and where I was, whether or not I had been around the city yet. Apparently, accepting a friend request has stronger implications here -- much stronger.
Additionally, I had already chatted on Facebook with two of the boys in my art history class -- nothing but innocent talk of hometowns and college majors, but in the Indian social context, a strong indicator of flirtation. Even worse, I had high-fived and then clasped hands with my hipster-glasses-clad guy (we'll call him Kartik) twice upon bidding him goodbye at the end of class, reading the gesture as casual and reminiscent of the American "bro handshake."
But I couldn't have been more wrong. When I told my host brother Alok one night about the incredible friends I was making and how unafraid of me they seemed, he flew into an overprotective tizzy. "He's making a pass at you!" he exclaimed after hearing that Kartik had actually come up and tapped me on the shoulder to say hi at the student canteen one afternoon. "No way!" I laughed, shaking my head at Alok as though he were being absolutely ridiculous. "These kids aren't stuffy conformists. They're artsy and liberal. He was just being friendly." I refused to believe that my hip, fearless art friends were as traditional as any other student on campus. After all, the guys and girls teased each other like siblings, they had bonfire parties behind the fine arts building till three in the morning, and they blasted Pink Floyd and Kanye from their iPods while they worked in the studio. I could let my guard down around them, even the guys.
I came to learn, however, that Alok had been right all along. One afternoon, after hanging in the print studio with Kartik and the others for a bit, he walked me outside to my cycle and told me he'd take me to "Mushroom Rock," a huge rock formation on the edge of campus with views of the university's sprawling wilderness, the next day. I gave him an uncertain response, knowing for sure that this was a date -- Indian boys don't just ask girls they aren't related to or extremely good friends with to hang out one-on-one unless they have a very specific, not platonic, intention. I headed home, knowing that Alok was going to kill me when I told him what had come to pass, and deciding that I was seriously going to have to work on my social skills in the Indian context if I wanted to survive the next three months without inadvertently leading on half of my male classmates.