My Long-distance Love Affair with
India
It started
simply enough. I work in IT (Information Technology…computers). Indian IT had exploded and my company took
advantage of a shortage of workers in this field by supplementing the talent we
had with ‘external associates’ – consultants.
It started as a trickle and soon became a flood. New faces were appearing everywhere to the
tune of ultimately around 3000 consultants to augment our own staff of around
5000. Yes, it takes a lot of computer
programmers to automate an industry giant.
The flood brought instant diversity to a predominantly white profession
in a predominantly white Midwestern town. The Change didn’t just affect the
walls inside my company. Our city began
to change, too. Indian restaurants began
appearing. Indian grocery stores began
appearing. People played cricket in the
parks. People began, for lack of a better term, strolling. Strolling…walking about with no particular
place to go and not in a fast walk intended for exercise.
How did this
affect me? How did this one simple
change within the walls of a company change my life? J
At the same
time the shift in work culture was happening, my daughter was signed up to take
Spanish in school. I love languages and
know enough Spanish to get me by but wanted to refresh my knowledge so I could
be a help with homework. I sought out
help on the internet and soon found a wealth of websites to teach me
Spanish. While I was there, I shopped
around…what else could I learn? I wanted
more of a challenge. Not that Spanish is
easy, but I decided I wanted to learn something that didn’t use my same
character set, something not based on the Roman alphabet. Yep, as you will see as you read further, I
am not normal. Chinese and Japanese seemed unapproachable as
art was never one of my skills and making the beautiful letters or figuring out
how they fit together was out of reach of my patience. At that point, a light bulb went on. A light that is still burning
brightly…brilliantly…(forever..ly).
HINDI! I’ll learn Hindi! The National Language of India! Ideas formed as to how I would have so many
teachers abounding for my new lessons.
And so I
started….very, very slowly at first. I
signed up at some language-learning websites like italki.com (more of a social
learning site), livemocha.com (social as well as content-based). I made ‘friends’ who would be encouraging my
language-learning and correct my written and spoken exams. I printed off a map of India and put pins in
the map indicating where my new friends lived.
I’ve always had a love of geography but India was just, well, India – a
triangular-shaped country hanging off of Asia, dwarfed by China, and surrounded
by ‘stan’s…Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Suddenly, printing off my map and sticking pins in it made me notice
states. India is made up of states. And this is where I really got drawn in.
India’s states are not like the states here in the United States. It’s not as simple as crossing a border here
where the people look the same, talk the same, and eat the same food. As I would soon discover, crossing a state
border in India changes things, namely, in a lot of cases, language. You’re kidding me, right? States have their own languages??? Oh, that was only the beginning.
I progressed…finding verbs at the end of the
sentence, direct objects at the beginning, and feminine vs masculine nouns,
adjectives and even verbs. I had to
learn to use postpositions instead of prepositions. Whew!
Was this more than I bargained for?
I was still, at this point, skipping actually learning the Devanagari
script, instead using transliterated hindi (making the hindi words as they
might appear in roman letters). (क्या = kya). This
made it easier to communicate in chat sessions.
Easier is a relative term, however.
Since transliterated hindi is however the speller might assume it to be
in roman letters, it took on all kinds of appearances.
And then there was www.livemocha.com. It allowed me to learn in transliterated
form, but I couldn’t pass level one without being able to read a passage
written in Devanagari script for my teachers to correct. And then my favorite Learning Hindi book,
which had carried me using both Devanagari and transliterated forms, started
forcing me at Chapter 5 to learn Devanagari.
Ugh. It was time to start over
and go to page one where all of the sqiggles were. Lots of them look similar to an English
speaker. For example here are some of my
troublesome look-alikes: म भ थ स .
Consonants
This isn’t all of them, and don’t get
me started on conjunct consonants which are two ‘letters’ squished together
usually using only parts of one of the ‘letters’ leaving a person like me to
say….are you kidding me? There are
over 1000 of these amalgamations. I
decided to only concentrate on the common ones and guess at the rest.
All of this obsession with learning
the language and meeting teachers from all over India opened my eyes to the
myriad cultural differences within the country.
Have I mentioned I like learning new things? In this one country, there is enough
diversity to learn forever. And because
Indian culture was virtually unknown to me, I dug in in all areas at once. Let’s start with Music.
I have a Masters Degree in Music –
Voice and Conducting. No need to go back up to the top of the article when you
say, I thought she said she was in IT? I
changed. Music is a big part of my
life. Western Music, I should say. In all my training, I was never EVER
introduced to Indian music – classical or pop.
New things are like Christmas
morning to me. Everything is sparkly and
new and a little bit breathless. The
Indian classical music is hard on the Western ear which relies on consonance. Indian classical is frequently
dissonant. There is a drone instrument
with limited pitches. The tabla is an
interesting mix between bongos and tiny kettle drums. The singer, singular because Indian classical
music is centered on the improvisational skills of a single voice within strict
rules, uses quarter-tones and sliding making it uniquely different from music
Western ears are used to. There is an
amazing mathematical beat cycle component to the music and those that are
math-inclined as well as musically-inclined would find it a challenge worth
listening for. And then there is
Bollywood music. It now fills my
iPod. Although the movies tend to take
on a bit of a corny side compared to Hollywood movies, the music is worth
exploring. I don’t want to offend
Bollywood movie-watchers, but American musicals put off many viewers as well, as
actors break into song and dance in the middle of the story line….this is
Bollywood. Large choreographed numbers
appear in virtually all movies complete with herky-jerky dancing. Movies are also much more wholesome than the
language, nudity and violence that litters American theaters.
Hold on while I go and get a bite to
eat before I start this next paragraph.
Just talking about food makes my mouth water. I love to cook. I am passionate about cooking and flavor. A
big part about learning about culture is learning about their food. So I tasted.
Hmmmmm. Different. I tasted
again. Hmmmm. Tomatoes, cilantro, onions… familiar. What ARE these other flavors?? The
quest for that answer increased my cookbook collection of already around 300 to
dedicate a whole shelf to Indian cooking.
Every new recipe to try meant more trips to the Indian grocery. That, in itself, was a little uncomfortable
at first. In supermarkets, one can blend
in with a hundred other shoppers. In the
Indian grocery, that number is less than ten, and many times less than
five. And I guarantee you, I am the only
blonde, blue-eyed shopper. I had to get
used to curious stares. In American
culture, staring is considered rude.
Indians, for the most part, will unabashedly stare.
So trip after trip, my larder grew,
and my confidence grew. I finally had to
rearrange my kitchen to allow one whole cabinet to Indian ingredients. I have to confess that I sometimes just open
it and stand there looking at it all. It makes me happy. I have YouTube contributors I follow to get
different perspectives…thanks Manjula for basic instructions (without much smiling!)
and thanks Vah Chef for an overwhelming ebullience and passion for
cooking. And then Hetl and Anuja from
Show me the Curry.com. And I follow
bloggers Sailu (Sailu's Indian Food & Andhra Recipes) and Nupur (One Hot Stove) where I also get
ideas.
I would prefer to cook Indian food
every day. My son loves it. My daughter
doesn’t even want to be in the house if I’m cooking it. I’ve
always wanted to be a vegetarian but with American cuisine it is
difficult. American food is centered
around A Meat, A Potato, and A Vegetable.
Coming from a country with a high percentage of vegetarians, Indian
cuisine has a wealth of choices. And not
once do you feel like you’re missing something by leaving out the meat.
The rumors and misinformation I like
to dispel are….”I don’t like curry”. “
Indian food is too spicy” Curry is not a
thing. In American cooking, curry powder
is something that you can buy along with your other spices of oregano, basil,
garlic powder, cinnamon, etc. In India, curry would be roughly translated
for us as a gravy, or a sauce. Curries take on all kinds of personalities,
especially depending on the area of the country you are eating from. Saying “I don’t like curry” would be akin to
saying…I don’t like chicken, or I don’t like pasta. It’s a whole class of foods.
And for all of you saying you can’t
handle spicy food…not everything is spicy!
And if you cook it yourself, you can leave out the green chilis or the
dried red chilies or the chili powder.
An important distinction here….chili powder in Indian cooking is ground-up dried cayenne peppers as opposed to
the chili powder we know here which is a dark brown to orange and actually a
spice blend of chili powder, cumin, garlic and oregano.
What a great story! I look forward to hearing more about your experiences.
ReplyDeleteI adore Hindi! I started learning about four years ago and I'm at basic conversation these days (and challenging myself by watching movies with the subtitles off!)
I relate so much to Hinduism that ten years ago I declared myself a Hindu and I've been exploring the issues that go along with that on a daily blog. Blogging is a great exercise to help learn about yourself :)
"Learning about other religions does not diminish your own." SO TRUE!
Thanks, Ambaa! I bought 3 Idiots first because it is an incredible movie but also to help me listen in hindi. I need to get my brain up to the speed of my ear for conversation. :)
ReplyDeleteA very beautiful article. I enjoyed every line of it. How i can subscribe to your blogs?
ReplyDeleteLet me check on that, Sudheer. I thought I had a link on here.
DeleteSudheer - I tried to add an RSS feed to the page. Can you try it??
DeleteI am very much going to enjoy this blog! I am intrigued! Can't wait for more! Thanks Kelly!
ReplyDelete