Eyes On Us

"Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective."
-Ernest Hemingway

Eyes, so many eyes turned on us wherever we walked. We were in India, and I, wholly conscious of being a beacon in the crowd, attempted to dismiss the matter as an ordinary fact of life.
Sometimes, as we strolled around with our hefty backpacks, Spouse would discreetly point out a pair of eyes that seemed not to blink at all, so stunned was the owner at my presence in a remote village or on a crowded footpath in Calcutta.
And then one day, a significant span of time after we had arrived in India, Spouse stumbled upon something of note.
"No wonder they were all staring. I think we should take the tags off our backpacks," he said sagely.
Unbeknown to us we had been jaunting about the place with enormous, fluttering blue tags that said BRITISH AIRWAYS in bold, imposing, look-at-me-I'm-a-tourist letters.