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Published: November 9th 2009
Incredible India!
No one tells you when you read the brochures for India that you’re actually going to be dropped off in a Bermuda Triangle type place called ‘culture shock’ for a few days - but it’s true.
To describe a brutal overview of this country coming from the West is to chew on a car exhaust whilst watching animals and people starve, people treating the whole place as a toilet, litter everywhere and the devastating impacts of modernisation damage both the landscape and the air. To make this all worse no one tells you how long you get to stay in ‘culture shock’ before you can actually move on towards Indian shores - for me it was around 10 days (I was always slow!)
In that time I had seen Delhi and then moved up to the north of the country and seen Kashmir -a completely different side of the coin - before returning to Delhi and moving on to explore Rajhisthan. I don’t know quite when it happened but somehow there is a place beyond our Western eyes - and one that follows a completely different set of rules to ours.
My grandparents are from
India and for me it was always going to be a very personal journey. When they came to England they were so proud to be in England, a land of bounty and opportunity and maybe for me more than my other cousins I had felt an enormous loss in how much they had embraced their new lives, leaving behind clothing and culture as if shaking off a bad memory. Any questions asked were greeted as if asking of a dream, sometimes to be told of affectionately and sometimes dismissively but never to be told of the same way twice (apart from my uncle - he was always raised by the aya!)
The people here are somehow governed by different rules and thoughts than we will ever truely understand. The police and government are famously corrupt (India is famous for pollution, population and corruption as I was told on the first day) and for this reason, and a far greater emphasis on religion than in the West you have a nation that hears a different drummer - a nation that won't be judged on this earth - and indeed will hopefully eventually escape it.
Anyway here I am, and
here I am now with a far greater understanding. A greater understanding and greater respect for them both and what they tried to achieve in moving to England’s shores. They tried to stitch the best of both of the cultures together - no mean feat - and have created for all of my family a beautifully colourful world. In England we value straight talking and consistency, but in India there’s a huge desire to please coupled with an innate understanding rather than fear of hypocrisy. For this reason my grandmother was able to encourage all us grandchildren to have some fun before we got married but still be virgins on our wedding night without doubting the strength of her conviction in either of these completely opposing statements. And in this I see India. A land of incredible hypocrisy, a land that would collapse if any detailed thought were given to efficiency as so many people need to dip their beaks into so many processes just to survive.
My grandparents brought with them the best that they thought India had to offer - family values, spirituality, good cooking, work ethic, complexity and endeavoured to blend this with the best of
British - our education and independence, our basis for free enterprise, our incredible welfare safety net enabling you to try at all of your dreams knowing there was always something there to save you rather than certain squalor in some unnamed slum.
I came to India expecting to find more of the East in me and instead have found an incredible gratitude for the life, the freedom, independence and choices that I have been afforded as a woman living in the West. No one will choose my partner or my job or any other facet of my life - what remains to be seen is what I do with those decisions!
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nancy breighner
non-member comment
india
I like everything about India.Food, decor, walls paintings etc.