I said to a friend earlier today - "I feel like doing very Indian things today. I feel like dressing up in dhinch Indian clothes, listening to Bhangra music and attending some Indian wedding." This was with 'Mahi Ve' from 'Kal Ho Na Ho' playing in the background, and having made that statement I proceeded to sing out aloud with it with great fervor, completely undeterred by my absolute tunelessness. I topped this off with renting and subsequently attempting to watch a fairly painful Hindi movie, '71/2 Phere', and guess what's it all about! An overly dramatic Indian wedding. I guess it has hit me finally - the missing home syndrome. I should have seen it coming though. Last week I saw a girl in office dressed in a salwar kameez and spent some time wondering why exactly it had struck me as odd. Until I remembered that it was certainly uncommon and pretty cool as well. Unfortunately the only salwar kameezes I brought along are dressy ones - shining colors, golden threadwork and so on. Not quite business casual, our suggested dress-code here. Yesterday I had an enthusiastic discussion on 'Mughal Indian architecture and languages' with a team-mate. Yesterday, thus was also when I referred back to my school history lessons in a long long time. Its surprising how easily I can remember arbitrary details that interest me when I have such a tough time remembering names, faces, roads, even conversations (usually work related ones).
All this sudden appearance of 'missing India' could also be the oft predicted culture shock finally kicking in. So far I've been blatantly refusing to acknowledge its existence. In a certain round of introductions for a class, an American woman talked about how she is experiencing a culture shock after returning home from a several years long stay in Australia. Another guy spoke about the culture shock he experienced after moving to Richmond from some other city he was studying in but when after my introduction I was sympathetically asked - 'So you must be experiencing something similar', I happily quipped - 'Not really'. I think the answer disappointed most people there. Maybe I haven't been defining culture shock right.
Just a clarification - I wrote most of this post, especially the first paragraph, on saturday. I couldn't finish it because I had started watching 'Kal Ho Na Ho' with some friends, so finally putting it up today.
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5 comments:
:) One of the reasons I love my job so much! I always have the luxury of telling myself, 'chill, you'll be home in a while'!
Kray, :). Its not that I'm itching to get away from here. Its good fun, just once in a while I get this urge to eat dosa or watch a hindi movie or listen to hindi music and so on.
Jojo, I miss the chaos, dust and everything. And yes, there are def'ly good things in every culture. As I said to Kray, I quite like it here.
But you haven't mentioned what it is that finally gave you a culture shock.
Arey, I'm not even sure if I did get the culture shock finally. Just coming up with different theories for my sudden sentiness for home.
Greets to the webmaster of this wonderful site. Keep working. Thank you.
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