| My sister just got back from her spring semester in Kolkata (Calcutta), India. She was approved and funded by her college, but was taking many different dance, mime, yoga, etc. classes at different studios all over the city (often being the only white student, or accompanied by a recent graduate of the same college who was there on a Fulbright) and staying at a Hindu mission for the arts.
She and the other girl had some very scary experiences during the Bandhs (general strikes) which shut down the city for days at a time, and more generally with a lot of sexual harassment and disrespect from Indian men on the street. She wore Indian traditional clothing (because the only women who wear Western clothing in Kolkata, outside the tourist areas, are "women of loose morals") and learned enough Bengali to defend herself, but it was still not very easy.
She has said that she loved her time in Kolkata and felt that she learned a lot, but that it was also a very tough place to do a study abroad. Apparently, the more Westernized and urban the location, the greater the problems of sexual harassment and disrespect of white women (in large part due to the portrayal of white women in Bollywood movies).
Her experience was probably about as scary as India could get, because she was mostly alone, in a major city, taking public transportation to non-tourist, non-university areas of the city. |