Photo: Erin Sams
A good friend of mine is originally from Chennai, India (formerly Madras). We met during our week-long freshman institute at Hiram College and held our first conversation as we canoed down the Cuyahoga River for one of our planned group activities. I don’t remember anymore how we happened to be paired together or what we talked about that day, but I’ll never forget what Divya told me later on about her first thoughts of me.
I had never been one to believe that the stereotypes of Americans, specifically American women, were actually true and that they held fast in communities all around the world. Before coming to college, though, I had had little exposure to foreign cultures and had never known anyone from a place like India. Nevertheless, I do think that what we in the United States know as normal social behavior is not necessarily very different from the same behavior in India, it is the way in which the behavior is perceived that sets our two countries apart.
The same goes for normality in ethnic physical characteristics. People find comfort in appearances that are similar to their own, while it is common to feel uneasy when one looks different from everyone else in a group. Divya has told me that she felt this way upon arriving in the United States. She was accustomed to American pop culture and the like, as it seemed most of the international students were, and this is how I finally learned the truth about American stereotypes.
Not only did she tell me stories about the day we canoed together, she recounted specific instances from our freshman colloquium course that I had been completely oblivious of. To her, my general, overall self was intimidating. I’m tall with the frame of an athlete, and I’m often taken as an independent and capable individual. To add to this, she would watch me arrive for class each day with one or two male friends from my previous class. Another trait to know about me is that I have always had a mix of friends, often with just as many male friends as female friends. To Divya, I was now not only large and intimidating but also promiscuous. I was entirely unaware of any of these images Divya had of me until sometime during the next fall semester when the subject arose.
Now, the tables have turned. I am traveling through India while Divya is in Ohio preparing for graduation and graduate school. She has every comfort of being in the United States while I am now traveling around her home wishing she were here as my guide. We have come to know each other very well since that canoe trip, but India is something that I never really talked about with her (except for the Bollywood movie nights we shared and her excitement each year for the Cricket World Cup). I have felt intimidated by the people, the cities, the train stations, the smells, and sounds of India every day that I have been here – much as I’m sure Divya felt those first few weeks at Hiram.
What has struck me most, and upset me most, is how different I have perceived social behaviors here to be from those in the U.S. There have been times when swarms of local Indians have gathered around simply to stare at us while we waited for a train. Although I felt personally threatened and feared for the safety of our group as I watched the crowd grow and move closer, I realize now that no one in the crowd wanted to do us any harm. They may have wanted to take our things, but so would we if we were in their position. These feelings of fear, but also of being intrigued, are relative to one’s own lifestyle. This experience also partly angered me because I could not understand how people could make me feel this way when a friend like Divya has always been so kind to me. I felt terrible for thinking the way I did while we stood in the center of the encircling crowd, but I have realized that the India I was familiar with before coming to the country myself was only one glimpse into Indian society.
We were, however, fortunate to see multiple examples of the people of this dynamic country.
For instance, we had an encounter while we were out to dinner in Agra. Our host at the restaurant had lived in several states in the U.S. while running a travel agency but returned to India to run a hotel and restaurant near the Taj Mahal. He was interested to hear about our travels and generously offered to speak with us about the history of India as well as why so many Indians are vegetarian. It was a fascinating discussion that separated meat-eaters and plant-eaters based on the laws of nature. In our case (as Divya can attest to, being a lifelong vegetarian), we are expected by nature to eat only plants and can expect problems to arise if we disobey. We thanked the man for his story, as it was apparent that he so enjoyed having a group of American students in his restaurant that he wanted to offer us everything that he could.
Have I seen anything different in the people I have interacted with in India that I would not see in Americans? I don’t believe so. I was justified in feeling intimidated by facets of Indian culture and customs that I did not yet understand. Divya, too, was perfectly right to believe her first impressions of me because they were characteristic of ideas taught by the media. In response to a recent email I wrote to a few friends, she acknowledged my insecurities about our travel. She wrote,
“Yes, India is a different country – now you probably can relate with me when I came in as a freshman and everything here was so new, ‘weird’ at that time, and different. It probably is hard to comprehend and process everything that is going on – I completely understand.”
When I return to school, I’ll be able to talk with Divya about what I’ve seen in India just as we’ve done since freshman year when something on television or something that someone said didn’t make sense to her. I had not realized how much Divya had taught me about her country before I came here, but now I’m starting to understand how she once felt in my country.
Photo: Unknown