Selfie Mania

Young Indians love selfies. As our tiger made her way out of the tall grass a woman was desperately trying to frame herself and the tiger with her selfie stick. She must have missed the entire tiger sighting trying to get an image of herself with a tiger she had her back to. 

They absolutely love to take selfies with us. Frequently they ask and we generally oblige. Sometimes they just sidle up beside or behind us and use us as their selfie backdrop. 

At the Lalitpur train station J made fans for life playing selfie games. It started with very young girls in very high heels asking him & me for selfies, then young men began to approach in twos and threes. J reciprocated most requests by taking selfies with them with his phone. A foreigner wanting to play selfie! Then he took off his hat and they saw his bright white balding head. It was received as if he had pulled a leopard out from his pants. Hilarity ensued and a crowd began to form. I showed him how to take selfies with fun animal filters and the crowd went apeshit. He turned himself into a bunny rabbit eating a carrot. Some dudes posing with him became lambs and mice with dancing cupcakes. Older men joined the crowd and called their friends over, “Hey, Rajiv, you have to see this white guy make crazy photos!” and they insisted on getting in on the fun. The whole platform was watching us. One fella with a luxuriant walrus moustache wrapped round his head really wanted a filtered photo but his face was already such a caricature that the software couldn’t figure out what to do with him. He got a plain selfie and seemed well pleased. 

Last night we went out a Bollywood movie called Pad Man. J was absolutely thrilled to discover he would be the only man watching a movie about Indian menstrual taboos with 6 women. Anyway, the Raj Mandir Theatre is a famous Art Deco explosion in pink merengue so we were taking photos and selfies with the decor. Then we noticed the people sitting behind us were intently watching our devices as we took our shots, so we began including them in our selfies. They were a combination of horrified, delighted and somewhat embarrassed. Then J turned on the goofy animal filter and they threw their arms over their faces and squealed. He turned around and told the woman behind us, “I am watching you watching me.” She clutched her boyfriend and giggled furiously. 

That’s us doing our part for Indo-Canadian relations.