Culture Shock

By Lavina Melwani

Here Indians don’t always come from India, the Brahmins are Brahmins at all and the Bengals have never tasted a rasgulla.

 

 

It’s like learning to fly or hitting choppy waters for the very first time.

Without a parachute or a lifesaver on hand.

Exhilaration and apprehension flower together — fear and a giddy joyousness.

Yes, coming to America for the very first time is a heady experience, for which nothing can really prepare you. For 300 years intrepid adventurers from every continent have been coming to the New World in search of fame and fortune. If earlier they came by cargo boats and steam ships, today’s South Asian wanderers travel economy class on Air India, Bimaan or PIA. The turn of the century top hats and suits may have given way to crushed Levi’s and sneakers — but the dreams and the aspirations are the same: conquering the Land of Milk and Honey.

Those prosaic I-94 markings on millions of passports hide stories of countless encounters when reality meets the myth of America head on. For, each immigrant who comes carries his own videotape of America in his mind.

America, as he believes it is.

An America often reconstructed from Hollywood movies and MTV and glossy magazines, half-remembered history lessons and images of JFK’s assassination and the Moon Landing. An America of star-spangled banners, dollar bills and Lady Liberty.

I had formed my surreal, disjointed America in Kinshasa, Zaire, where our introduction was through the local contingent of friendly American Marines: every Friday we joined them at the Marine House for action-packed Hollywood movies, ate enormous amounts of hot dogs, burgers and popcorn and guzzled Coke. Other American acquaintances invited us to the club run by The American Embassy Recreation and Welfare Association, known popularly as AERWA. There in the bar, the huge TV monitors played endless replays of American football, baseball and ice hockey — and so the impression I got was that everyone in America was either a super jock, at least eight feet tall, mostly blonde and blue-eyed, or looked like a sexy Hollywood starlet.

 

America, to me, was tall buildings, fast cars and beautiful people.

Hitting American soil was a real eye-opener. We landed on a drizzly day at dusk and our taxi took us to Astoria, Queens. The cars parked along the curb looked beat-up. Out on the stoop a bunch of men were sitting hunched over their six packs and a dog was incessantly barking. Somebody was clanking garbage cans. My cousin’s home was in a slightly rundown three-family house and as we trudged up the stairs, bags and all, I wondered with a sinking heart whether this was really America.

The next morning, however, it was sunshine and blue skies over Manhattan. I had only to see the majestic glass skyscrapers glittering amidst the stone canyons, the famed publishing names on the fronts of grand buildings, the gleaming mile long stretch limos, to know that this was indeed America. I sat on the granite steps of the hallowed New York Public Library, flanked by Patience and Fortitude, the two majestic stone lions, and browsed through my Writer’s Market — my first purchase in America.

 

Since then, of course, I have learned that America is — like any place — a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Rather than a glittering peroxide Hollywood replica, America is people — tall, short, thin, fat — of diverse faces and beliefs, cultures and colors — and that’s where its true beauty lies.

Yet, for the first few days I went around in a daze, and at night I found I could hardly breathe, my heart fluttered so. Had we done the right thing? Coming to America — this magical, mystical, maniacal place. Was it real or a figment of my imagination? This place where we knew no one — except for this one cousin — and no one knew us. For the first time we had no fixed address and all our possessions, all our histories were in two suitcases. Almost two decades later, ensconced in a comfortable house with a network of family and friends, I smile at those past fears. America is now benign — it is home.

Indeed, in the beginning, for many immigrants, there is disbelief. Are you really in America? In New York? You say it several times, trying it on your tongue. It’s a name out of magazines, out of movies, out of day dreams. Madison Avenue. Park Avenue. Fifth Avenue. You feel as if you’ve actually entered a board game or a Hollywood set.

In Anurag Mathur’s hilarious novel The Inscrutable Americans, written in the form of letters to home from an Indian student in America, he describes his hero’s first encounter with the baggage carousel at an American airport. "Next I go to place marked ‘Baggage’ as Father has advised and suddenly place I am sitting starts to move throwing me. It is like python we once saw in forest, only rattling and with luggage bouncing on its back and sometimes leaping to attack passengers. I am also throwing myself on bag before it is escaping. I think if I am not wresting it down it would revert to plane and back home to India. I am only joking of course."

As he settles down, he writes, "Kindly assure Mother that I am strictly consuming vegetarian food only in restaurants though I am not knowing if cooks are Brahmins. I am also constantly remembering Dr. Verma’s advice and strictly avoiding American women and other unhealthy habits. I hope Parents Prayers are residing with me."

Yes, in this confusing land of native Indians, Boston Brahmins, Political Pundits, and the Cincinnati Bengals — Indians don’t always come from India, the Brahmins aren’t always Brahmins, political punditry doesn’t involve Sanskrit slokas and the Bengals have never tasted a rasgulla nor set foot anywhere near Bengal!

Get out of the airport and into a taxi and you realize everyone is crazily driving on the wrong side of the road! Either that — or you’ve been driving on the wrong side in India all your life. The stuff you pour into car is no longer called petrol — it’s gas. And in spite of every kind of automobile here, you are struck by the monotonous tone of the decorous highways and the predictable grayness of it all.

Where is the gut-wrenching drama? Where are the slow-moving bullock-carts and smoke-belching trucks bedecked like brides in multicolored artwork, the cacophony of tooting horns and cycle bells as ponderous Ambassadors and auto rickshaws and rickety buses and sly Bajaj scooters and dizzy cycles zigzag through the traffic?

Enter Pathmark or Waldbaums, and the newcomer is in for another shock — the place is lined wall to wall with thousands upon thousands of food items! Talk about choices — even choosing an ice cream from the 70 plus flavors would challenge the strongest decision-maker. Even dogs and cats have gourmet choices in a whole aisle devoted to pet food. Everything is big, big, big from the giant 3-litre bottles of Coke to the tubs of popcorn that one could swim in. Americans load up their shopping carts as if it’s the last day of the world, and everything is for free.

Many newcomers are stunned by this over-abundance. As one long-time resident recalls, when she first came she was dismayed by the sheer wastage of food: "I remember being at a relative’s house and getting shocked at good food being thrown away in the garbage because ‘no one will eat it tomorrow.’ Having just come from Bombay where thin, wild-haired children scrambling in garbage piles is a common though heart-breaking sight, I really felt angry at the careless throwing away of food."

In India, there were always so many willing mouths for every bit of food — be it the extended family, nieces who’ve dropped in, or the neighbors gathering over for a game of cards. Not to mention the dhobi’s son and the sweeper’s little girl.. And of course, there was always the friendly neighborhood cow, willing and able to dispose of all your leftovers.

After a while, you even start missing the raucous Kabariwalla who knew all about recycling long before the environmentalists found it cool. Early mornings he would take to the streets, heralding his arrival in a loud, singsong voice. You would drag out all your old magazines and newspapers, he would bring out his rusted metal scales and money would change hands. I think I much preferred that financial transaction to leaving my stack of New York Times on the curb for the recycling truck.

And when I put my discarded clothes into the Salvation Army bin, I remember the woman in Bombay who would inexplicably trade your pounds of used clothing for sparkling ‘katoris’ and plates of steel. A friend of mine did enough shrewd exchanges to outfit her whole kitchen with steel pots and pans. It always seemed a mystifying transaction to me, one of life’s unsolved mysteries.

 

Perhaps the biggest culture shock comes when newcomers from India realize that in America their personal army of cooks and cleaners, gardeners and drivers, ayahs and gofers is reduced to — I, me, myself. In fact, in the pecking order of things in India, even a lower middle-class person has had at least one domestic helper to take care of the nuts and bolts of household work.

Many have never encountered an American-style broom before, vacuumed carpets, cleaned windows or the bathroom in their lives. This is culture shock in the extreme! They have to grapple with previously unknown horrors like ring-around-the-collar and dustbowls and bathtub scum. They lug their dirty laundry to the neighborhood Laundromat, lug their groceries home and then lug the bags of garbage to the curb. They cook and they clean — and the next day the whole tedious cycle begins again.

For this they came to America?

In India, cheap labor ensures that you really don’t have to do anything for yourself for there’s always the magical neighborhood electrician or carpenter who is over in a jiffy to fix things. As Janet Chawla, an American married to an Indian and settled in India, observes, "I don’t do as much hands-on stuff as I used to in the west. I don’t feel I’m creative in making things or learning to fix things any more. I’ve become more dependent, which is not necessarily a good thing."

As Indians living in America become more Americanized, the delights of personal cooks and carpenters become just happy memories, and they learn to become quite handy with the tools, doing everything from painting their rooms to fixing clogged sinks. Home Depot is Paradise.

After living here a while, another truth begins to sink in — you’re totally on your own. There is no extended family to bail you out. There’s no ancestral family home, no parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins to chat with about nothing and everything. No second cousins nor brother-in-law’s uncle to get give you a recommendation for a cushy job. No helpful maiden aunt to mind the kids, no motherly next door neighbor to show you how to cook your chicken curries or pickle your lemons.

You’re in the driver’s seat.

As writer Kiran Desai put it succinctly about being here and there: "In India you get up in the morning and there are ten people there to greet you and to discuss how you slept. Or you can call up someone and tell them how you’re feeling and what you dreamt about." Indeed, in America, this exercise would probably yield an answering machine on the other side.

Even sounds — or their absence — can nag. Recalls Desai, "When I wake up in India I’m always so aware of the birds, and all the morning sounds. Over here, you wake up to total silence. Silence and emptiness. In India the air is full of the sounds of life. Here I feel I have to create it — you have to put on your music in the morning to get the feeling of something going on around you.

"In India — it’s all there for you: your identity is there for you, your life is there for you, your community is there for you. Over here, everything is what you do yourself. It’s a lot of pressure, I suppose!"

There is also the added pressure of being a minority, different, the Other after a lifetime of being King of the Hill. There is something to be said for growing up in a country where your accent is just right and your skin color is the only way to be. A place where everyone understands the Indian cow’s perfect right to meander in the middle of rush-hour traffic. A place where you don’t have to explain the dot on your head or why Ganesha has an elephant head. Moving to America, you slowly realize there will be no national hullabaloo over Diwali or Holi, and August 15 is just another day. Your children will be asked questions and will have to make identity choices that you didn’t have to even think about in India.

Coming to America also means learning a whole different language of style. It often means putting away those stacks of saris and kurtas and all that gold jewelry. As a FOB (fresh of the boat) immigrant, I was puzzled by the sight of American women dressed in pearls and two-piece suits — and clunky sneakers — as they scrambled to work in Manhattan. I just couldn’t understand why their sense of elegance abandoned them at their feet. Now, of course, having been a New Yorker for 18 years, I know all about comfort and I wouldn’t dream of walking in anything but my sneakers. My impractical high heels are cradled in my bag, to be slipped on later.

 

Indians are fast learners. Now it’s not uncommon to see just about everyone and their uncle from Haridwar in tracksuits and sneakers, even if the only sport they’ve ever indulged in is exercising their fingers with the TV remote control. At the bhangra blowout at the Summer Stage in Central Park last year there were little old grandmothers merrily dancing to the beat in Punjabi suits — and Nike sneakers. Even the Hindu priest at the temple wears sneakers.

Since English is spoken in both India and America, language shouldn’t be part of the culture shock — but it is for are they speaking the same English? When Tenaz Dubash and her sister first arrived in Syracuse, they encountered a biker in the park who waved and said ‘How’re ya doing?’ Recalls Dubash, "My sister and I were really puzzled. What does he mean ‘How are we doing? Are we doing something we are not supposed to be doing? We felt really paranoid until we learnt from my uncle and aunt that that was just an Americanism for hello, how are you."

Another time, Dubash, now a financial writer and independent film-maker, was waiting with her mother and sister outside the community college. There was a sign that read ‘NO STANDING ANY TIME’. Chuckles Dubash, "We weren’t driving at that time and didn’t know this referred to cars. My sister with her over-active imagination said, ‘Why can’t people stand here — may be it’s a red light area, may be women aren’t allowed to stand here.’ So she started hustling my mom and me away from there!

"There are obviously differences between the Queen’s English and American English," says Dubash. "An example is the ever-popular rubber. I did that myself. I said ‘Can you hand me the rubber’ and of course everyone in class was shocked, because here you call it eraser and a rubber is something very different!"

Indeed, American expressions like ‘take it easy’, ‘give me a break’ or ‘get off my back’ can be as puzzling to newly-arrived desis. As Anurag Mathur’s hero writes to his brother, "Someone says ‘darn it’ and there is nothing to sew. One fellow says ‘beat it’ and I am eager to beat him but supposing it is meaning something else? Or they say ‘Sit on it’, which is very kind of them, but there is nowhere to sit. On streets, stranger will ask ‘Are you with it?’ I ask, ‘Are I with what?’ He says, ‘Cool it.’ Now, brother, what is this wonderful ‘it’ everywhere you will ask?" No wonder the poor man concludes, "I feel my American has improved but my English has deproved."

Another big culture quake for Indians is seeing the Kama Sutra enacted live on the subways: young couples locked in passionate embraces, oblivious to the teeming crowds. For inhibited Indians who have grown up with Bollywood’s watered down version of sexuality — twittering birds, budding flowers and singing couples in imaginative acrobats — these brazen displays of affection are shocking.

For Kavita Chandran, equities reporter with Bridge News, seeing gay men in action was a real eye-opener. She was stunned by her first sight of gay men smooching with abandon on New York sidewalks. True, she had seen men walking hand in hand in India but nothing quite like this. She says, "It still gives me the jitters, but I’ve overcome the initial shock of public display."

From public displays, it’s a quick jump to public manners. Chandran observes, "In India, it is very rare that the person ahead will hold the door for you while passing by. So, I have to admit it took me some time to fathom the cold looks I got each time I let go of the door after me!"

Indeed, while Indians are known for their world-class hospitality and deference to elders, there is a total breakdown when they have to stand in a queue for anything. The orderly and polite lines at banks and check-out counters, buses and theaters in America is something unthinkable in India where people scramble into public transport as if it’s the last bus out of town.

Another cultural difference that Chandran has noticed is that American women in their 80’s and 90’s are so well-poised here, with matching make-up and clothes. She observes, "Age sure is a state of mind here. Women back home should learn some of this." Indian widows especially seem to abandon any attempt at maintaining themselves and could take a lesson or two from women here who are so full of life, dressed in joyful purples and reds. For them, life doesn’t begin or end with a husband, and that perhaps is one of the biggest cultural differences for women.

India is a country where emotions run high and spirituality is in the very air one breathes — from roadside shrines to the garlanded portrait of Lakshmi in the paan shop to the tiny image of Sai Baba on the dashboard of the taxi. Whether it is thousands of clay Ganeshas immersed in the ocean or Diwali celebrated with millions of earthen lamps in millions of villages, religion is India. Here in sanitized America, there may be churches, mosques and temples — but it’s all low-key, decorous and rather boring. At such times one yearns for the surreal color and passion and pandemonium of India — in America.

At the same time, there are certainly some welcome cultural differences — such as the basic dignity of a human being, which America espouses so well. America is by no means perfect in matters of race and color, but there is a core respect for the human person. You won’t hear of poisoned wells set aside for low-caste people or shoot-outs because people despise the lowly work you do. The poor sweepers in India would be stunned by the exalted status of the sanitation workers in America, who make pretty handsome salaries.

‘Won’t You Please Give Your Seat to the Elderly or Handicapped?’ This reminder, with a graphic of a heart embedded in the word ‘You’ is common enough in American buses and subways. Yet the premise behind it is the basic equality of all citizens. Even the disabled in America have their rights, with many laws to protect their dignity. In India to be born disabled is a major liability and the many conveniences for the handicapped which are taken for granted here are a rarity in India.

There is also a general lack of respect for human labor in India and this is often reflected in the way Indians treat other Indians in America. Unconsciously, many replicate babudom and burra sahib over here, but only with their fellow Indians, for they know Americans won’t stand for it. Rajini, (not her real name) a computer consultant who works in her husband’s Indian restaurant on weekends, says, "Whenever Indians come to the restaurant, they don’t tip at all. Waiters would prefer to serve Americans rather than Indians any time. I have seen Indians leaving even three cents as a tip — and there were six people at the table! It’s getting so bad."

She has exchanged notes with several restaurant workers and all of them have the same complaints. She says that many Indians, especially computer programmers, are making $ 80-90,000 a year and many of them turn around and leave paltry tips. She says, "I don’t think they would do this in an American restaurant. Of course, not all Indians are like that, but many certainly are. I’ve heard that many of the restaurant owners even keep the tips themselves and don’t give them to the servers at all."

Is tipping a cultural issue? It may not be because in India there are many people who leave generous tips and tipping is the norm in all restaurants. But the way the serving person is looked upon is certainly a cultural difference.

Says Rajini: "Here, when I wait on the tables, I don’t feel shame. It’s a job. I feel it’s normal because everyone is doing it here. But when people come from India they don’t think of us as respectable persons. They don’t think we deserve to be left anything. However, once people have lived here longer, they don’t do that."

Recently a 92-year-old grandmother visited New York for the very first time. She merely smiled when asked whether she had undergone any culture shock during her two-week visit. Her response after a moment’s pause was: "Not really. Nothing is new. Bombay has all these things, it’s only more crowded. And with the Internet, we’re all so connected with what’s happening."

Yes, in this age of CNN and MTV and the Net, Culture Shock may eventually just become Culture Rock.