Cultural differences

I was in Kerala chilling and relaxing after being back from the Netherlands where I had been for a year. I was narrating tall tales of my adventures abroad to the naive villagers.

Among them was a government health care professional, a nurse, Leelamma. She had humble roots, was married to an ex-military man, had 2 adorable children, doesn’t know much about the world and was not a great tracker of world events. She wanted to know all about life there. How did I travel, what I ate, what the people there do, how did they behave, are they good people….most importantly the obvious questions – the family structure there. Do kids live with their parents, do they love each others, and are they protective, do they marry, do they have children?????

I explained to her that I had not met too many married Dutch people; I met a lot of people in serious relationships. I met couples there who had been living together for 3 or 5 years, maybe have a kid also, but who are scared to death of getting married or have to even consider marriage. But they are totally committed to each other. They have all that we have in a marriage. I did not get a clue why they were so mortally scared of getting married…maybe it was the sense of loss of freedom.

While I was saying all this she asked me – do they really love each other or is it like they show in movies one night with one person and the other with someone else?? I thought about it and said – they were very much in love and very much exclusive in their relationships... then she asked – did they love their kids and take care of them and I said – yes, they most definitely do.. Maybe their idea of loving kids is different from ours, but they do love their kids.

So what is different between them and us, she asked? What is so important in a marriage, she asked? The question, per say did not shock me... I had thought about that much too often, but coming from her, it shocked me. Here was a married woman whose entire life was confined to an area of about 10 km in a village in Kerala and even she understood the basic fiber of human life.
We get married for various reasons. But whatever the reason, marriage as many people have told me is supposed to be a necessary evil. I don’t know about the evil part, but I think marriage is mainly construed as a hedging mechanism. It hedges the risk of you, well, dying alone. The risk is still ever present, but we try and hedge it. So, I guess in the real scheme of things, when two people love each other or care for each other, it is a matter of the heart, is there a necessity to legalise the relationship?

As Leelamma said, what a man and a woman do in the cover of darkness in the privacy of their bedroom remains the same – marriage or no marriage... so what is the big deal!!!

In another instance, I was walking towards the bus stop, one hot, humid, sultry afternoon. I was cursing the heavy jeans and the T-shirt I was wearing... Man, it was so hot!!! And then I saw a couple of Muslim women walk past me clad in black burkhas! And momentarily my thought was , are these people crazy, how can they wear all that black and cover themselves head to toe in such heat. What kind of religion teaches them that? I was convinced that they are crazy.

Anyway I caught my bus and once comfortable inside; I was gazing out the window and saw a couple of firangs. They were clad in stringed nothings and I thought to myself – what shamelessness. How can they be so…..prude?? How can they wear almost nothing and still be comfortable.

Then I realized what I was thinking now as against what I had been thinking just a few minutes back. I thought the Muslim women were crazy to be over dressed and the white people were shameless to be so under clad. When did anyone make me an authority on dressing norms? Where is it written that what I was wearing was appropriate?

The realization stuck me very hard that it was not just me who thought likewise. A whole bunch of Indians … why limit myself to Indians, a whole bunch of people in the world think on these lines…It is so silly that a race as evolved as the human race still fights or judges others on matters as trivial as what you wear. If a girl wears low waist jeans she’s got to be a bitch, if a guy wears a floral shirt, he is gay for sure!

When do we actually break out of the confines of our petty thoughts? When do we actually become the advanced of all the species on earth?

No time soon, I think…