"Only In India..."

I came back from dinner today from Ambesh (our favorite restaurant, which, by the way, is entirely vegetarian!) and flipped the switch to my room – only to find that my fan and light weren’t working. I was confused, because all of my neighbors had their lights on. Just to make sure that I wasn’t crazy, I made my way through the dark to the outlet on the wall, and plugged in my power adapter. After flipping the toggle at the outlet and getting the little red light to go on, I realized that my room had power, at least to the outlets, but for some reason the ceiling light and fan just weren’t turning on.

I decided to venture down the hall to ask one of my neighbors why my lights weren’t working. I found one of the rooms where voices were audible from the hallway and gave a nock. There was an indecipherable answer, but I opened the door to a few Indian fellows (in both literal senses of the word, haha…) that were sitting on their respective beds, just chatting, one of them with a laptop perched on their lap. Upon explaining them my situation, one of them smiled at me, bobbled his head back and forth in a manner that you would have to be here or understand Indian culture to picture, and walked me back to my room.

He simply flicked a switch outside of my room, which sent the fan whirring and the ceiling light ablaze. I hadn’t even seen the switch, but apparently they’re installed so that the building supervisors have the ability to turn off your lights and fans (to save power) while you are gone – without having to get keys and enter your room without your permission. All-in-all a good system, but I did not even think that there could be an external power supply to my room. My Indian friend, however, stuck around afterwards just to chat.

When I sat down to take off my shoes, he sat down as well. I’m not sure if he thought I was inviting him to conversation (I wasn’t), or if he was curious and wanted to start one himself (more likely), but we just started talking about each other, school, and our respective involvement with the Deshpande foundation here in Hubli. I still hate how bad I am remembering names, but I cannot remember his… nor those of his five friends that somehow found out that their pal was chatting with the American down the hall.

We spent at least an hour talking about everything from Indian geography, American geography, Indian culture and language groups, the San Diego Zoo, the Kashmir region of India, Yellowstone Park, India-Pakistan relations (a touchy subject), the Golden Gate Bridge, India-China relations (also a touchy subject), Indian nuclear politics, and a good deal more. One of the men that joined me spoke wonderful English (he studies for two years at Missouri University in Kansas City), and another one of the fellows was comparatively talkative. He seemed to have a bit of a speech impediment, but had a wonderful vocabulary and was perhaps the most talkative. The other four talked less than the main two ( I think they knew less English, or were simply less confident), but all knew enough English to get things across, although sometimes they had to help each other pick the right word, or I would have to

I’ve learned a few things about Indian culture – more accurately, some limited observations about a select group of Indians, as well as a couple anecdotes – and I would like to share them with you:

1.) They care about two things – “India, and girls”. That one made me smile.

2.) They are really up to date on current events, politics, and the history of their nation. More so than the average student back in the U.S., even more so than the average USC student. Perhaps a “World Class University” is nothing more than a meaningless saying, because these men needed no appellation of the sort to know what was going on in their country and the World. One of them even taught me something about the history of U.S. geopolitics in the subcontinent, and taught me something about a pending Bill in the U.S. legislature that I hadn’t even heard of.

3.) There is a good deal of animosity towards Pakistan and China here. This may be a taboo subject to talk about, but this may not be evident to everyone reading this. Suffice it to say, that I have made the best attempt here to address the subject with tact and balance. The following is my attempt at a history lesson, in order to better contextualize my previous statement.
In 1947 India and Pakistan (then Pakistan included Bangladesh) were partitioned from Britain, and effectively freed of colonial rule. The countries currently known as Pakistan and Bangladesh were then one Muslim-majority country known as Pakistan. The country we currently know as India was called India, but was led by a group of kings in a quite decentralized government. In 1951 the constitution of India was ratified by all of the states, and the rule of the kings was ended. India now has a President, a parliament, and a Prime Minister (India is a Secular Socialist Democratic Republic). Pakistan is somewhere between a democracy and a theocracy (you can be the judge of that, given recent political developments). There is a region between India and Pakistan called Kashmir that is claimed by both India and Pakistan (India controls 2/3 of the area, Pakistan 1/3), and it has been a source of conflict since 1947.

In 1962, China invaded parts of eastern India, beat up on a bunch of Indian Army units, and then left. We didn’t go much into why, but rest assured that they were “thrashed” (as my friend put it) pretty badly. In 1971, when Pakistan (then Pakistan and Bangladesh) had a civil war when Bangladesh wanted to break away from Pakistan to form its own country, India supported the people of Bangladesh and helped to kick the Pakistani army out of Bangladesh (subsequently leaving and letting Bangladesh establish itself as a sovereign nation). The Indian military also “thrashed” (as my friend put it) Pakistan for good measure.

Add in the fact that India and Pakistan both detonated nuclear test weapons in 1998-99, and the fact that there are suspicions that China gave nuclear weapons to Pakistan, to all of the history in the past two paragraphs, and perhaps you can see why some animosity exists.

4.) They are extremely patriotic. They love their country, and are very proud of it. Multiple times during our conversation the phrase “only in India” would come up, and it was usually very appropriate. For example, India has 26 different states with thousands of languages and many different cultures. Another interesting tidbit is that one of India’s past Prime Ministers did not speak Hindi. During an address to the nation he presented a speech that he had written in Kannada (a regional language), and had been translated into Hindi (the national language), and then back into phonetic Kannada such that he could pronounce the words (which in Hindi he did not understand, but had written the speech in Kannada so he clearly knew the content) in a way that would sound Hindi and be understood by all listening.

For comparison, this would be akin to the United States electing a president that spoke only Spanish. The president would write the State of the Union Address in Spanish, and then a translator would turn the speech into English for the President. Then, the translator would convert that speech back into phonetic Spanish such that the Spanish-speaking President could clearly pronounce the English words that he had no understanding of what they meant (beyond the fact that the original content of his Spanish language speech would be preserved because he, of course, had written it).

If that is too mind-boggling to understand, then join me in saying “Only in India!”