“May I please take your picture?”

I’ve asked this question of people countless times during my travels, wanting to capture a smile, an outfit, a small shop—an image that evokes my experience in a particular place and time. Usually, the answer is a smile and a “yes.” Occasionally, it results in a rather amusing pantomime involving me pretending to snap photos and smiling and the subject looking quizzical. Very rarely is it “no.” I suppose if a visitor to my home town asked to take my picture, I’d acquiesce. But in India, for the first time I found myself on the receiving end of this question. I was surprised and discomfited. After all, I was the traveler, not them.

Initially, feeling somewhat taken aback, I assumed that there was something wrong with me. After a young man in Delhi asked if he could take my picture, I surreptitiously checked my teeth to make sure there was no remainder of my favorite lunch of dal tarka stuck among them. I felt the heat of embarrassment spread across my face, my apprehension assuming he asked so he could later ridicule my image with some derelict gang of his fellow high-school boys.

My tour through Delhi and Agra progressed, and my self-consciousness only grew as the question became more frequent. I felt hounded by people asking the question I wanted to use myself: “May I please take your picture?” It didn’t matter if I avoided eye contact, wore hats and sunglasses, or pretended not to understand. Two young men skulked around me at the Taj Mahal, pointing and laughing. At me, I assumed. A year earlier, I had a rather unpleasant episode of being groped in Egypt by two men who approached me in a similar manner. Now, I allowed my discomfort to lead me, quickly hopping across the bridge of the Taj’s reflecting pool to escape into the crowd.

Eventually, I realized I was being ridiculous. I’ve traveled a lot. I’ve been in uncomfortable situations, something that can be hard to avoid as a solo female abroad. If I didn’t want to interact with others, I should have stayed home. If people wanted to photograph me because I didn’t look like them, then so be it. So what if my photo was going to be the source of amusement across the Indian subcontinent? Who cares if my image went viral on Indian Facebook? Surely the desire to document things and people that are outside one’s daily experience spans the globe. Wasn’t it fair to assume that curiosity is universal? Didn’t I want to take pictures of them for the same reasons that they wanted to take pictures of me? Yes. And yes.

So, I relaxed. Later in my visit at the Taj Mahal, I again ran into the two snickering fellows. They renewed their request. I agreed, but only if they would be in the shot with me. We chatted for a while in the broken English and hand gestures of those who don’t share a common language. Now I’m not ashamed—I’m even proud—to know that somewhere in India, on someone’s cell phone, there’s a picture of me. Smiling.