Coffee and Conversation For One, Please

I ventured out to Mocha (you know, “coffee and conversations”). I am for sure being a pretty big pussy, thinking that everyone is always staring at me. Maybe people here im Mumbai glance a little, but it’s not like anyone is hassling me, except for that kid that latched onto my shirt. I do have a bad memory of the day I walked down 125th St. in Harlem and someone yelled, "Damn! Now that's a white boy!" Blonde hair, I guess.

Whites have a long history of showing up at places where they’re in the minority: Western Africa, India, China, the Americas. Trouble is, wherever they showed up in the past, they subjugated everyone. (The commies among us would argue that capitalism is a further subjugation of everyone not-white – “take $.20/day to make these shoes, and I’m a buy a Park Avenue Penthouse!”) I’m reminded of what the Chinese used to call the goofy ass Westerners (with what the Chinese thought were goofy clothes, long noses, ugly light-colored hair, horrible body odor): white devils. I’m worried everyone will hate me cause I’m white, and we whiteys have a reputation of being imperialist assholes. Even to this day with the Iraq mess and a half.

On the other hand, most middle-class-type people think Americans are cool. We’ve got the cool movies like Spider Man and awesome music groups like the Backstreet Boys (awesome to Indians). We’ve got Friends and Starbucks and fancy clothes and shopping malls. Middle class aspirations, cultural leveling. It’s been my experience that foreigners with middle class aspirations think Americans are cool, still, I feel so guilty about my skin color.

Ever heard the NoFX song “Kill All the White Man”? The title holds basically all the lyrics to the song.

No Conversation for my White Ass
Mocha isn’t really a coffee shop, but a sort of sheesha (flavored tobacco smoked out of a water pipe) bar and restaurant. They have no wi-fi. Mocha is an outdoor lounge on a patio three stories above my intersection. There are sitting areas with bamboo drapings, sectioning off these areas, for groups to sit. I guess the drapings keep out the sun. Plus there are fans in these little partitions. It would probably be pretty fun… if I had friends.

Lunch
Babu made me lunch. Suprisingly, it was veg. It was also delicious. I think that thin, spicy, tomato sauce has lentils in it and is called dhal. After lunch I walked by the kitchen and saw Babu there sitting on the floor eating from a plate with his hands. I wonder if Babu is a villager. He’s worn the same clothes since I got here three days ago, but from what I can tell, he doesn’t smell.

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