Peter, 39

What do you do?
I teach music in the U.S.

What are you doing in India?
It's quite sad — I was planning to come and study with my guru, but after I booked the tickets, he passed away.

I'm sorry.
Thanks. Now I'm continuing the music research that I've been doing for the past twelve years. It's good. The indie music scene in India is really exciting. When I was here in 2000 and 2001, there was hardly any live music happening. But it's really taken off. It's exciting for me. And it's an exciting social scene.

You pointed to your wedding ring as you said that.
That is correct. I got married last year.

Congratulations. You're right though. It is an exciting social scene. You're in a city filled with very interesting, very beautiful women.
Hmm.

Remember your wife might read this.
That's true. No, but there are a lot of very beautiful, very interesting women and...

How did you meet your wife?
Actually, at a concert, in Boston, about five years ago. A musician was playing two shows, and I was leaving from the first show, and she was coming for the second show and it started raining. It was quite a magical moment. I had an umbrella and she came under my umbrella and we started talking.

In this industry, is it difficult being married?
God, these are probing questions. But I really haven't been tempted. I do enjoy the pleasures of looking. I've never dated a South Asian woman. That's always something that's been fascinating, but I never had the occasion to do that. More than one person has told me, "You're studying India. You'll never fully understand India until you're with an Indian woman." So I almost feel obligated to fulfill my duty as a researcher, but I never have.

Do you think women here hit on you just because you're white?
That happened fairly often in 2000. I was in my late twenties then, and India was very different. A lot of things were very different then. Before 9/11, before the George Bush era, America still had this luster to it. I think after the invasion of Iraq, for Indians, that probably changed. I was here before and after 9/11, and into the aftermath of the invasion and I notice that before that whenever I was walking on Juhu Beach, kids would come up to me and say, "What country? What country?" and they wanted to hear America. And that's been changing. So I imagine it's changed in the dating scene too. You can't get away with that whole Mr. America Guy thing, making the girls weak in the knees. I feel sorry for the guys today, because they don't get the token American points that I would have had back then.

Any good hookup stories from back then? From before you got married?
I'm not really at liberty to talk about the one person I hooked up with here. I made very good friends with some single Indian women around my age, and they wanted me to meet their parents because they thought I would have been a suitable match or something like that. But I never had any passionate hookups with any women I met while I was here. Sadly.