These lovely girls followed us as we strolled along Kozhikode Beach in Kerala. The beachgoers of Kozhikode, covered head to toe in 95 degree heat.
We took a seat on a bench, and the three girls stood a few feet away, watching, waiting. After a few minutes, they tiptoed forward, giggled. One asked if I would be in a photo with her. She used her phone to take a photo of the two of us. I asked if I could also take a photo of the two of us.
“No!” she said. “No, no!”
“It’s because they are excited to see foreigners, but they don’t realise that they are also foreigners to you,” a friend wrote me afterward.
Still, I caught the girls on camera as they were walking away. The affection in their embrace gets me every time.