Being An Interracial Couple In India (Mumbai Vs Shillong)

Being an interracial unmarried couple in India is far from easy.

Me and my Dutch boyfriend were travelling together to India for the first time. Apart from the stares that we got from people who treated us like statues in a museum, I was surprised by the contradictory lives that people live. And being from North-East, this confuses me a lot. On one hand there are people driving convertibles at 11:00 in the night and on the other hand women are getting harassed in broad daylight. India is a land of contradictions, and living in Mumbai for five days was enough to see this. My boyfriend got confused and heartbroken over the conditions of the homeless in Mumbai and said that the only way to forget this all as to go inside our five-star hotel. But this picture changed so much when we tried to reside in a three star hotel in a seemingly 'residential area' after our online booking for the same in 'booking.com'. We were told that we can't stay in a residential hotel or that we have to get two different rooms because we are from two different nations. I am still trying to understand and process all this. How can the life that rich and 'progressive people' can lead is so much different than the life by middle-class conservatives?

How can a country like India be one of the worst countries for women to live in where Indian men think that it is their right to check you from top to bottom but also boast the existence of matrilineal societies? And how can the states with such societies considered 'backwards' than the rest still baffles me. This brings me to the next part of our India trip, which we took to my homeland. Needless to say my boyfriend loved that part the most, not only because of the nature but also because of the kindness of the natives there. As a non-native (I'm a Bengali) who grew up in Arunachal, even I hate the non-natives in north-east. Instead of telling north-east to integrate more into Indian culture, maybe the vice-versa would be a better option. We have a lot to teach the mainland, and female empowerment & removing toxic masculinity is definitely one of the top contenders in that list. Oh btw, I completely forgot to mention that in north-east (read Shillong here) no one cared that we were an unmarried couple there.

Finally I should end this article on the cheesy note of diversity. India is nothing but diverse and hence full of contradictions. We are one of the best melting pots around the world and it is a huge responsibility to maintain.