The trip to the CEE field site earlier that day had left me feeling exhausted. After taking a quick nap my flagging energy levels had recovered enough for me to venture upstairs for a beer with several of my classmates in one of the hotel rooms. While this picture hints at a gathering reminiscent of any small scale university party, it isn’t able to capture the important caveat that Gurjarat is a dry state – no alcohol is available for consumption by locals, and foreigners must perform the equivalent of a bureaucratic scavenger hunt in order to obtain libations.
This marked difference in what the local government mandated as acceptable behaviour for locals versus foreigners brought me back to earlier questions of self identity and difference. The “no liquor for locals” policy clearly demarcated a difference between the inhabitants of Gurjarat who were forbidden from (legally) consuming alcohol, and tourists and travellers that could, with the correct amount of bureaucratic wrangling, gain access to special government controlled stores which sold liquor at a tremendous price mark-up. By embarking on the process to obtain alcohol, I was engaging in a behaviour which reinforced a state of exception that clearly separated me from the inhabitants of Gurjarat.
My ability to consume an alcoholic beverage in the presence of my peers (an act which I unquestioningly took for granted back home) served to reinforce my identity in India as a white, (comparatively) wealthy traveller for whom all sorts of exceptions and luxuries forbidden to the residents of Gurjarat were available. This realization prompted an uncomfortable disconnect between the way I had hoped to behave in Ahmedabad (as a traveller who is culturally sensitive and aware) versus how my behaviour framed me in the eyes of Gurgaratiis (as a privileged white traveller to whom exceptions were afforded). It was also fundamentally at odds with my desire to not be identified by the people of Gurjarat as a wealthy, privileged white person – an image I had tried hard to avoid through culturally appropriate dress, behaviour, and language use. This event helped me to realize that no matter how hard I tried to immerse myself in local culture and behave in a manner consistent with local norms, a combination of factors (such a skin colour and socio-economic status) would continue to reinforce my status as an outsider.
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