What an awful place!!!
The ClubHouse: Archives: What an awful place!!!
Oregonfire | Friday, October 26, 2001 - 06:11 pm   Yup, that nodding thing is prevalent in India. We were told to get on the wrong train by a nodding person. Apparently the idea is that Indians (huge generalization) would rather be polite that tell you they don't know. And Indian bureaucracy can be like the movie "Brazil." Once I spent the whole day at a travel agency where the customer number sign was stuck on 97. Five hours of 97. I don't know why, I just sat there and went with it. I was having the India experience, wasn't I? Plus it was like 100 degrees outside. An Indian man got really angry, so I guess this kind of almost surreal inefficiency gets annoying to Indians too. Usually I found most Indians to be remarkably patient and calm people in the face of so much chaos. I also felt way more safe in India than in some other countries that I won't mention. (Marhajah, where are you? I'm aware of my sweeping generalizations.) |
Madelane | Friday, October 26, 2001 - 06:27 pm   Oregonfire, I'll bet that is totally it. Politeness explains why at least some of these people would just keep nodding. I didn't even think of that. I'm not so sure the cab drivers weren't being more sneaky than polite, but I think you are on to something with nodding lady. I have to admit I am my meanest to people who can't help me with directions. I remember several times being lost and totally frustrated and I will ask someone where the place I'm going is, and if they even hesitate I have been known to yell "forget it, you don't know anything", and drive off in a huff, which is completely ridiculous behavior. Imagine an innocent person being attacked for not reading my mind. But anyway I totally sympathized with Emily. Says more about my issues than hers, I'm afraid. |
Tntitanfan | Friday, October 26, 2001 - 06:54 pm   After nine years as an international exchange coordinator for high school students, I can tell you that Asian people totally value being agreeable. They almost never say they don't know something that you want them to know. Smiling and nodding make contacts more ageeable, so they smile and nod. Cultural differences can cause misunderstandings, and Americans (in general) have been sheltered from dealing with other cultures. |
Mahrajah | Saturday, October 27, 2001 - 10:38 am   i honestly thought i should make a thread regarding her calling those people "stupid" but i choose to xnay that plan cause i figured people here would get offended... ladies and gents what u saw was India..plain and simple.. every town in India is like that and encompases all those people you saw.. i know it must have been a sad sight to watch for people who are not from India or are Indian.. it is what it is.. thats my country |
Mahrajah | Saturday, October 27, 2001 - 10:54 am   furthermore i also 100% agreed with that Drews comments that those kids look through your soul cause indeed they do.. it is that way becuause its plain and simple.. the law of the jungle has been flooded into society.. the weak perish.. the strong survive.. no matter how much aid we get from red cross, un or any other country it will always be that way cause it has become a way of life.. those kids and those "beggers" god forgive me cause i hate calling them that are poor and cant make any money so what happens is they are hired as servants to work for a headman who controls all the other unfourtunate people.. if they dont beg they basiclly die of hunger, mal-nutrition and all that other stuff.. if you thought watching them broke your heart than god forbid you ever see the conditions they live in.. i know this is a worldwide problem but i honestly believe without offending any other race or country that India has the biggest problem of the rest.. because theres just so many of them and me and my family do as much as we can to help and provide for those human beings.. cause thats what they are.. there not "beggers" i got used to it because i grew up around it and after a while u get used to either helping or ignoring.. its a part of india and its the way its always been.. lookin back at the show and how she said "stupid" after thinkin about it i can excuse her because shes not from that country and she was very irritated and tense.. thats very understandable and i can excuse because i would have been like that if i was stuck somewhere i didnt know anything about... the big shots are too busy pushing their political agendas and their $$$ and the poor are left to fend for themseleves.. its utter chaos.. hope this much which i have said you can understand.. if u have any more questions regarding india.. feel free to ask.. by the way i havent checked into the AR thread thats why i was soo late answering your call.. Anyone not associated with India should feel happy they are not in India.. sad but its what it is |
Tntitanfan | Saturday, October 27, 2001 - 12:08 pm   Thank you, Maja! Just before I came here I left a note in your folder telling you that we needed your insight on this thread. Until I spent nine years working with high school foreign exchange students, I didn't realize how different other cultures are from ours. Over the last decade the number of first generation immigrants in my city has grown rapidly, and now stands at one in six! It is a difficult adjustment for many of the "natives" to make although our culture will be greatly enriched by it. |
Oregonfire | Saturday, October 27, 2001 - 01:21 pm   One last comment about the India thing: PBS showed a great documentary last night called "Adventure Divas." This episode was about Indian women who are activists for the poor, women's rights etc. It was not boring at all, and I think there is another installment on India coming up (Nov. 2nd, 10:30 p.m. in Oregon). Here is an excerpt from pbs.org written by one of the women featured on the show: By Pramila Jayapal India — it is one of the most complex, overwhelming and rewarding countries in the world. It is the land of the sensory, a country of vibrant colors and intense contradictions. It is life uncensored and unsanitized, earthy and dirty, glorious and golden. There are no stepping stones in this country to take you gently and slowly where you must go. Life doesn't permit it. You are forced to engage in life here, to be stimulated by what you see and feel and think and smell. In the discerning and differentiating of the mass of people and sensory experiences is also the opportunity: to dig deeper into yourself as a human being. India is so many things to so many people. To try and describe her in entirety is impossible, so let me introduce you to my India: a place where pinks and reds and blues and greens are expected to mingle, and color in the markets and the clothes enlivens the landscape; where the smell of spices and flower garlands permeate the winding, dark alleys and busy, potholed streets; where the noises of animals and cars pelt your ears and the pushing and shoving of throngs of humanity force you to expand your own boundaries of personal space. This is my India too: village women with skins darkened from the sun and weathered by winds, bent over gracefully in the lush green rice paddies, coconut-oiled hair gleaming in the sunlight; children, barefooted and bedraggled, delighting in the ordinary days and surroundings because they do not know to depend on other things; old men and women encircled by generations of family who understand that some wisdom comes only with age and that familial relationship — for better or worse — is forever. Grace, Poverty, Injustice And, finally, the last of my Indias: excruciatingly unfair, despairingly ramshackle, unflinchingly confronting. Poverty, discrimination and injustice are laid at your feet, impossible to escape. No issue is clear; all are shaded by the complexities of circumstance and the need for solutions that topple long-standing social hierarchies and perspectives. Injustice toward India's girls and women is no different: They carry families and communities in their strong, capable hands and seem to receive so little in return. Yet, they are the ones who have told me laughingly that they would never exchange their lives in the village for mine in America, a life they see as fast and impersonal, devoid of connection to others and to the earth. Every morning, in villages across India, women spend hours creating beautiful drawings outside the doors of their homes, drawings of chalk and colored sand, of gathered flower petals and grains. These drawings are a reminder of the existence of grace, of possibility and of transience. Each day, the drawings are washed or blown away — this must happen for something new to be created again the next day. The women who create them delight in the beauty of the present and the possibility of the future. They create joy in simple ways that nurture them through hardship. From the Gut The difference between Indians and Americans, I once said to a friend, is that Indians die thinking they should and Americans die thinking they shouldn't. Later, the words kept coming back to me and I realized that they neatly captured much of the essence of the two societies. The notion that we are supposed to die recognizes both our limitedness and limitlessness as human beings. It accepts, not questions, that the world extends beyond us and that we are merely transient creatures on this planet — beliefs that permeate everything in India from the mundane questions of when the bus will come to the soul-searching questions of why our lot is what it is. It allows for the existence of spirituality — so paramount in Indian life — as well as community. In India, time exists to facilitate human interaction rather than simply to measure the achievement of tasks. Community — which we try so hard to create in the West — emerges organically in India. Women come together to cook around a sooty open fire, to carry buckets of water from the village well, to talk about babies and husbands, about the price of rice and the vagaries of weather, about the joy of an upcoming marriage or the pain of losing the village's children to the city. Indians exist in relationship with each other and with the earth, constantly searching for answers to a physical and emotional landscape that offers little clarity about why we are here and what is possible. India makes me speak from my belly instead of my head, from the places where I feel and live and love and die. In the end, this capacity to evoke emotion is India's greatest gift. Pramila Jayapal is a writer and activist. Her first book was Pilgrimage to India: A Woman Returns to Her Homeland. She lives in Seattle with her four-year-old son. |
Kep421 | Saturday, October 27, 2001 - 01:55 pm   Thank you Oregonfire. That program hasn't come to my town yet, but I'll be watching for it. |
Donut | Sunday, October 28, 2001 - 09:45 pm   i didnt add to this thread cuz i didnt think i could express things in a way that would make much sense, but oregons article put some of my thoughts into wonderful words. I was in India for a few days and loved it.I mean i had those 'bad' experiences, having every tour guide paw all over me and shop owners try to offer kisses in exchange for fair prices and then going thru a bag i put down in the store to take my things, being nodded at and given bad directions, seeing 'beggars' and people sleeping all over the sidewalks,this all while being horribly sick from drinking the water and in 110 degrees of humidity. Despite this my memories of India are the incredible drive from the airport at sunrise with the smell of jasmine and the sounds of monkeys and exotic birds, and the beauty and warmth and strength of the people and the country and architecture. I was afraid to say here that i loved it for fear of being thought insensitive to the poverty, but as bad as it is it just felt to me that it just was a part of a culture where everyone was trying to make the best of their position in life. I was also in Korea, Turkey, So. America etc and yes there are huge cultural differences in communication. There is a lot of 'saving face' in many cultures and people would feel much more horrible to not give directions than to drive you around or tell you to go somewhere and hope that they got it right. It is infuriating, but i just came to understand it as their way of trying to interact helpfully, most of the time. I also understood that my treatment as a woman had more to do with media and the image that other cultures are fed about american women, such that they think we expect to be treated that way. I also found that once you get outside of cities that there is much more gentleness, and i am sure that tourists who come here get the same thing. In Seoul especially, it felt that the materialistic growth and western influence in the city exploded so rapidly that the people living there hadnt had enough time to catch up with it behaviorally or culturally creating attitudes that you would never find in outside villages. So anyways, i havent seen enuf of Amazing race to judge emily, but i was very upset at her behavior, and at the show for setting up a premise where the idea is to run frantically thru a foreign culture with reward for getting thru it with the least involvement possible (Fast forward being the highest thing you can hope for) setting up lots of situations for 'ugly american' behavior and 'unexplainable' foreign behavior. see, i knew i shouldnt have gotten started here! anyways i just think it is compex and there is beauty in places that takes a back seat to ratings-getting scenes in reality TV and believe me i am not expecting PBS here ( i dont even watch PBS, i mainly like my TV stupid and comfortable) Just think if foreigners thought we were all like life in the BB2 house! So i think we should just remember what editing does, and try to view these shows as contrived entertainment an not use them to formulate any conclusions of what any countries or cultures might really be like. ok, soapbox now being removed- i better go write a limerick or something.. |
Whoami | Monday, October 29, 2001 - 08:51 am   I just want to comment on the poor nodding woman. She was probably just responding to Nancy, who ALSO nodded when she asked a question! Something like, "do you know where this place is?" As she completed the question, she would nod, and the nodding woman nodded back in response! |
Hippyt | Monday, October 29, 2001 - 07:10 pm   WHew!!!I started a very interesting thread. I just wanted to add that I was not saying India is awful place,but the marketplace,to me, was. I would have been afraid of going into that chaos alone not knowing the language. As for Emily,I think she was scared and shocked at what she was seeing. Why she called them stupid,I don't know,but it wasn't normal behavior for her. When I wrote what I did,and still now,I just was so shocked at all those children. Thanks to those of you who added the info about India. |
Realfan | Thursday, November 01, 2001 - 08:58 am   Great thoughts. I'm writing a historical novel set partially in India, so I love the background. If I had been Rob and Brennan, I would have gotten a lot madder than they did at the cabbie who took them to a tour agency in the opposite direction instead of the Taj Mahal. What a racket! At least they figured it out quickly, and got another cab back. They lost some time, but they made the train first--then things equalized, AGAIN. I wonder if the producers designed it so no one could break away? |
Crazydog | Thursday, November 01, 2001 - 09:07 am   Definitely adds to the suspense and interest if it appears that the teams are relatively equal. How boring would it have been if one team is consistently hours ahead because of an early Fast Forward? Plus, the interaction between the teams is part of what makes it interesting. I agree about the cab. I am quickly tiring of these Indian cab drivers who try to take advantage of foreigners. Not trying to be racist, I'm sure it happens in a lot of places - but it's the first time we have seen it happen on this show. Never in Zambia, France, Italy, or Tunisia did we see cabbies consistently bilking the contestants. |
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