Undesirable Contact

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I have to say, far and away, that the thing that disturbs me most about Sri Lanka is the people that try to touch me. It started innocently enough. My amma would take my arm and pet it much like you would a dog as she was introducing me to the neighbors. And that was fine.
But then the other day I was talking on the phone before class and one of the women who works in the house walked by and patted me on the stomach on her way out of the compound, as if I were pregnant. And that was confusing, more than anything else.
And then I went into Kandy city yesterday to purchase a notebook and the chocolate ice cream I had been craving for a month, and some ancient woman I have never met stroked my forearm as I walked by. And that was harmless, but nonetheless unsettling.
And then on my way home from the ISLE center just now, I came across a man with a malformed arm in the street, who tried to feel my bicep when I told him I had no money. And that was downright distressing, as I happened to be walking alone.
I guess it escapes me why trying to touch the arm of a foreign stranger would be a natural reaction. If it were exclusively men, I could attribute it to some odd form of sexual harassment, but the majority of the people that try to touch me are women. It almost seems as if they want to feel my skin to see if white skin feels different from brown skin. I suppose it just confuses me as my skin is not much lighter than the skin of the lightest Sri Lankan citizens.
But I suppose if my forearm is all that they touch, I can live with that.

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