With twenty days of living in Chennai under my belt, I have a pretty good feel for life in a big southern Indian city. One of the most amazing (and frustrating) aspects of this country is its amalgamation of cultures. Essentially, crossing any state border will bring you into a completely different language and people. What the people do have in common, though, is their persistence in the heat, their dress, food, and national pride.
I know my way around Anna Nagar fairly confidently. Shopkeepers, tailors, and restaurant owners that I often run into can recognize me. Some know my name, but “Kim” is a very foreign syllable and difficult to pronounce for most locals. The opposite is just the same – it takes me about 30 repetitions of a name to remember it. There’s Nitya, Kokeela, Periswomi, Krishnamourthi, Sorange, Ganesh, and Ragu. All of those names are spelled like how they sound to me. I still have ten more optometrists’ names and the hotel staff’s names to learn. Besides the way I dress, I am easily recognizable by locals because I smile and make eye contact a lot.
Smiling is a really difficult habit to break that I need to stop. Smiling and making eye contact with men is as good as an offer for betrothal. It emboldens the young and makes older men more forward. I made this mistake several days ago with one of the optometry students who comes to camps with us; during the car ride he asked me seemingly innocent questions that turned out to be really intimate for male-female relationships amongst Indians. “How old are you? (Twenty-one, me too!)” “Are you single?” (Thanraj asks this of every volunteer, so I thought it was normal) “What is your favorite restaurant here?” And then: “I REALLY like foreigners. Do you?” Next thing, this guy whips out his cell phone and shows me a love poem he just happened to have on it. I got the hint. I won’t smile.
Laughing is a no-no, too. Well, it is socially acceptable and people do it here, but we Americans do it too much. We are not a serious culture, which is not looked upon favorably here. Adding to injury, laughing is sometimes rude because of the language barrier –others have no idea what we English-speakers are saying and take offense. Laughing and smiling in the OR is a very big offense that renders a harsh lecture from one of the doctors, who say that we Americans essentially scare the patients. Plus, surgery is nothing to be happy about. The doctors themselves crack jokes and talk about “happy ending massages” all the time, though. Go figure.
Cultural differences are definitely difficult to cope with, but I think I am doing very well. Though I have difficulty speaking to anyone besides doctors, the hostel owner, and Thanraj, I have still forged friendships without understanding words. Nitya and Kokeela, for example, are optometrists and young like myself. We talk in our respective languages to each other and somehow things work out. Today, as a gesture of niceity, Nitya put a string of flowers in my hair during our car ride to a camp. These small white flowers are strung and sold by women sitting on street corners – they are used to make anything more beautiful (rear view mirrors, holy statues, and especially women’s braids). With the bindi between my eyebrows (which I have gotten into the habit of wearing everyday) and the fragrant flowers, I am beautified. The girls gave me the “okay” hand sign and smiled broadly at my transformation. The people here are very happy and accommodating once they realize that I am willing to be flexible and want to learn about their culture. Apparently, few volunteers do so.
One of the doctors looked at me on Thursday morning in my scrubs, cap, and mask and said "You look more Indian every day." I get that a lot.
Being open to southern Indian culture has helped with homesickness. I’ve been here for three weeks and am just starting to feel the twinges of missing home. I finally caved in and broke out my iPod yesterday for some American music. I only have eaten Indian food for the past twenty days, which is fifteen days longer than any other volunteer can claim. I think it’s time that I purchase some pizza or fried chicken (no burgers here, they don’t eat beef – cows are sacred).
I’ve been told that northern cities are more Westernized than Chennai is. I will probably like that better because a lack of street signs and trash pickup is really annoying me. Tamil Nadu, as much as I like it, is more of a place to visit than live without any language training. I wish Unite For Sight better prepared me for the language barrier in lieu of making volunteers memorize dozens of eye disorders and diseases that ophthalmologists reteach us here during shadowing.
I know my way around Anna Nagar fairly confidently. Shopkeepers, tailors, and restaurant owners that I often run into can recognize me. Some know my name, but “Kim” is a very foreign syllable and difficult to pronounce for most locals. The opposite is just the same – it takes me about 30 repetitions of a name to remember it. There’s Nitya, Kokeela, Periswomi, Krishnamourthi, Sorange, Ganesh, and Ragu. All of those names are spelled like how they sound to me. I still have ten more optometrists’ names and the hotel staff’s names to learn. Besides the way I dress, I am easily recognizable by locals because I smile and make eye contact a lot.
Smiling is a really difficult habit to break that I need to stop. Smiling and making eye contact with men is as good as an offer for betrothal. It emboldens the young and makes older men more forward. I made this mistake several days ago with one of the optometry students who comes to camps with us; during the car ride he asked me seemingly innocent questions that turned out to be really intimate for male-female relationships amongst Indians. “How old are you? (Twenty-one, me too!)” “Are you single?” (Thanraj asks this of every volunteer, so I thought it was normal) “What is your favorite restaurant here?” And then: “I REALLY like foreigners. Do you?” Next thing, this guy whips out his cell phone and shows me a love poem he just happened to have on it. I got the hint. I won’t smile.
Laughing is a no-no, too. Well, it is socially acceptable and people do it here, but we Americans do it too much. We are not a serious culture, which is not looked upon favorably here. Adding to injury, laughing is sometimes rude because of the language barrier –others have no idea what we English-speakers are saying and take offense. Laughing and smiling in the OR is a very big offense that renders a harsh lecture from one of the doctors, who say that we Americans essentially scare the patients. Plus, surgery is nothing to be happy about. The doctors themselves crack jokes and talk about “happy ending massages” all the time, though. Go figure.
Cultural differences are definitely difficult to cope with, but I think I am doing very well. Though I have difficulty speaking to anyone besides doctors, the hostel owner, and Thanraj, I have still forged friendships without understanding words. Nitya and Kokeela, for example, are optometrists and young like myself. We talk in our respective languages to each other and somehow things work out. Today, as a gesture of niceity, Nitya put a string of flowers in my hair during our car ride to a camp. These small white flowers are strung and sold by women sitting on street corners – they are used to make anything more beautiful (rear view mirrors, holy statues, and especially women’s braids). With the bindi between my eyebrows (which I have gotten into the habit of wearing everyday) and the fragrant flowers, I am beautified. The girls gave me the “okay” hand sign and smiled broadly at my transformation. The people here are very happy and accommodating once they realize that I am willing to be flexible and want to learn about their culture. Apparently, few volunteers do so.
One of the doctors looked at me on Thursday morning in my scrubs, cap, and mask and said "You look more Indian every day." I get that a lot.
Being open to southern Indian culture has helped with homesickness. I’ve been here for three weeks and am just starting to feel the twinges of missing home. I finally caved in and broke out my iPod yesterday for some American music. I only have eaten Indian food for the past twenty days, which is fifteen days longer than any other volunteer can claim. I think it’s time that I purchase some pizza or fried chicken (no burgers here, they don’t eat beef – cows are sacred).
I’ve been told that northern cities are more Westernized than Chennai is. I will probably like that better because a lack of street signs and trash pickup is really annoying me. Tamil Nadu, as much as I like it, is more of a place to visit than live without any language training. I wish Unite For Sight better prepared me for the language barrier in lieu of making volunteers memorize dozens of eye disorders and diseases that ophthalmologists reteach us here during shadowing.
