Humbled

It all started in Ruaha National Park. It was my first time going out on data collection, which basically involves walking around in the sun for a few hours. Depending on whether we were collecting antelope poop samples or doing a walking transect observing animals, animal tracks etc, we would end up walking anywhere between 4 hours to 8 hours. As we were leaving, my wife handed me a bottle of sunscreen after she was done using it, as if it were the most natural thing to do. I stared at the bottle and then back at her in part-disbelief and part-contempt. Had she forgotten how invincible I was against the sun? I, with the armour of melanin coursing through my skin? I, who had played cricket for hours on end under the blazing Indian sun my entire childhood. I, who had practically grown up mocking the sun and the only damage it had done in all these years had been a temporary darkening of my skin by several shades every now and then (which I later came to realise was what a tan was). My wife had handed the sunscreen to me a couple of times before in the US and she had been duly chastised because you don't ask Michael Jordan to wear shoes with bouncy springs in it to dunk basketballs. You don't give Sachin Tendulkar a wider bat to belt the cricket ball all over the ground. You don't give Lance Armstrong a motorcycle to win the Tour de France. Everyone knows they don't need it. My wife, recognizing the familiar look on my face just shrugged, shook her head and just said 'ok, suit yourself'. I smirked condescendingly.

Off we went on our data collection rounds. I was wearing these overpriced field shirts bought from REI with a flap stitched into the arms to hold on to your rolled-up sleeves. Well, if I was going to be in the field, I was going to look the part as well. So of course, my sleeves were rolled up and tucked under the flap and I had my explorer hat, worn stylishly tilted on my head, announcing to the world about the arrival of a great adventurer. I don't know what the others saw when they looked at me, but I saw Indiana Jones. And Indiana Jones set out into the sun with the rest of the team every day at 7 am sometimes returning at noon, sometimes later.

After a few days, one evening as we were relaxing at our camp, I told my wife, "I think I have may have brushed up against some wrong plant. Look at my forearms. Seems like I am having some kind of allergic reaction. My skin is turning white and it is peeling off in some places. It is itchy as well."
My wife looked at me in that way she looks at me when she thinks that I am acting stupid just to annoy her. And then she realised that I was being serious because this was my first ever sunburn and there was no way I would have known that I was sunburnt had she not told me. She laughed in that 'I told you so' manner which wives all over the world seem to master without any training and asked me, "So are you going to use my sunscreen tomorrow?". I nodded meekly, knowing that I was finally defeated by the sun after 34 years. Indiana Jones never showed up again because every day after that, my sleeves were worn long and my hat was pulled down straight trying to cover as much skin as possible. The sun in Tanzania had humbled me after years of unsuccessfully trying it in India and the US. Later on just out of curiosity, we checked the temperature one afternoon using a thermometer we had and it read 53 degrees C (127.4 degrees F). No wonder.

In the 1992 movie, White men can't jump, Woody Harrelson showed us that white men can indeed jump. In Dec 2009, I discovered something similar about brown men. Not about jumping because honestly speaking, when have you ever heard of a basketball star from anywhere between Iraq and India or even from Latin America? Never. So yeah, brown men still can't jump (or to give them the benefit of doubt, maybe they are not that interested in basketball) but brown men, as proved by yours truly, can get sunburnt.