An Eeenglish person or for that matter a Jahman person drives along a deserted road and comes across a traffic light on red. He slows down, he stops and waits. Only if the light does not change for a few minutes will he look around furtively and, provided there are not signs of any authority figures around, drive slowly past the red light feeling rather naughty.
An Indian drives along a deserted road and comes across a traffic light on red, he does not even slow down but sails past as though it was not there.
Now: The English person is alarmed at the Indians behavior, The light is clearly there for a good reason after all, it’s a matter of safety isn’t it? The slight inconvenience of stopping is far outweighed in his mind by the possibility of an accident and maybe injuries to himself of other people if the light’s command is ignored.
The Indian thinks the English persons behavior is stupid, crazy even; why waste time stopping when there is nobody about?
Of course both are right in their own way and this example serves to illustrate a fundamental difference in the thought processes of Indian and North Western Europeans.
Another driving based example: An Englishperson is in a slow moving queue of traffic and sees somebody trying to turn into the queue from a side road. Many people ( BMW drivers and white van man excepted) will signal or flash and slow down a bit allowing that person to filter in in front of them. This action they reason has slowed thier journey by a couple of seconds at most and has given both themselves and the driver they have allowed in a nice warm feeling.
This simply, never, ever, happens in India
I’m constantly told not to say ‘Danyawad’ (thank you) to waiters as they are ‘only waiters and I am a Sahib’. When I do say it, the look of extreme puzzlement on the recipients face is not, I am assured, because they do not understand my accent but because they cannot understand why a sahib is thanking a waiter.
Again, one would only ever say ‘please’ ( Lie Ee Ay) to somebody who is deemed to be ‘above you’ In a restaurant one says ‘Bring water now!’ ( Ek pani la!), never Ek pani lie ee aye!
These cultural differences underlie virtually all interactions with Indian people and need to be fully understood before those people can be understood. It’s so easy to end up thinking ‘What a rude bastard’ when a person is simply behaving in the normally accepted manner.
Nevertheless, I’m always finding myself thinking ‘WARB’ !
Then there’s the old time keeping issue…….. Arriving on time signifies that you are inferior to the person you are meeting and the length of time that you keep people waiting indicate the degree of superiority you have or feel capable of wielding. A shopkeeper has to be really desperate for business to deal with a customer immediately! If in his shop, you are on his turf and he is therefore in control.
There an oft used phrase here: ‘Eck minute, eck minute!’ ( literally ‘One minute’) this will mean anything between five minutes and one hour.
Drives me ( and all the other Eeengleeesh ex pats I know) mad.
OK ( Teigh – hei: pron - teekay) Enough of this, its off my chest now , I just need to redress the balance of this missive ( and maybe my karma) finishing off by stating that yer average Indian type person is about ten times as charming and hospitable as yer average English and I’m constantly bowled over by the thoughtfulness of the people I meet and interact with, even complete strangers.
Off up into the Ghats tomorrow for an overnight stay, it’s the time of year when the forest trees are flowering, not only is this a beautiful sight but also provides a great opportunity for birding as many normally furtive species like Scimitar Bablers will come to feed on the rich sources of nectar or on the insects that come to the flowers.
Chaloo!
