If ever there were a people who were brutally honest, it was the Indians. Everyday, I run into more and more evidence that the phrase must have been invented to describe Indian speech patterns.
I once read that "the truth is a bully we all pretend to like," and the phrase struck me as fairly accurate. The reality in India however, is that Indians don't just pretend to like this ubiquitous bully, they are fiercely committed to her.
On my second or third day at Sambhavna, I listened in mortified agony as a couple of the women in the clinic informed an American volunteer that her face had become ugly due to a recent outbreak of acne. "Your face? Very bad..." they commented, prodding at her face and shaking their heads in consolation.
Soon it was my turn, Jimmy the adorable 6-year-old son of the cook who prepares dinner for the volunteers had a habit of plopping into my lap, joyously squeezing my arms, then resting his head against them in a fit of giggles. Eventually my Hindi improved to a point where I could understand his explanation of this pattern of behavior. He proudly told me that he enjoyed leaning on me because my arms were fat and therefore very comfortable. As he closed his eyes, and rubbed his head against my arm, his tone and giggles defiantly melted my horror at receiving the news of the secret of his adoration.
But the truth here isn't always brutal. After the details of the flaws in my appearance are recited to me, compliments have a special relish. Unlike in the Western context, they are not passing comments whose truth value is completely questionable. They are determined, well-considered statements that inspire the kind of confidence that can only result from knowing exactly where you stand.
My experience with Indian honesty has taught me a valuable lesson. Insecurity and unease do not come from knowing your flaws. We all have mirrors, both literal and figurative. Rather, they come instead from the false comfort and ambiguity we derive from the dance of polite lies and euphemisms with which us Westerners adorn our speech. Although, Indian billboards feature impossibly fair women with impossibly perfect beauty--these advertisements don't seem to provoke the same type of attempts at emulation and consequent body-image issues produced by their counterparts in the West. The fact is, my friend was having an acne outbreak and I do need to lose weight. In India, these truths do not make us any less beautiful or any less human. Speaking them is actually a sign of a deep-seated understanding of their relative insignificance, an understanding which seems to be lacking in Western culture. Flaws are a fact here, and people are just as happy to point them out in themselves as they are in others. They are simple, brutal and true.
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Bieng frank could be refereshing and uncomfortable at the same time.
ReplyDeleteAmerican political correctedness is irritating. Ghanaians are the same. They point out things that are obviously there and apparent that Americans, for fear of being politically incorrect, would never. I think we could all use a lesson in that.
ReplyDeleteI thought these lines had some serious poetic philosophy to them:
ReplyDeleteInsecurity and unease do not come from knowing your flaws. We all have mirrors, both literal and figurative. Rather, they come instead from the false comfort and ambiguity we derive from the dance of polite lies and euphemisms with which us Westerners adorn our speech.
Your cultural transaction seems to be very fruitful. I was just reading about the value of dual consciousness by a Professor from Bryn Mawr. I'll quote part that you might find interesting:
"As you say, you don't feel differently, or perhaps act differently, until you move from one culture to another. This "cultural schizophrenia" is what Fritz Fanon and WEB Dubois have called "dual consciousness," and occurs in many people who for one reason or another live lives in several different cultures. Maybe it is people with dual consciousness who have the biggest impact on cultures, if for no other reason than because they themselves transmit to one culture aspects of another? And perhaps because they are aware of (conscious of?) both the ableing and the disabling aspects of cultures in ways others aren't? So maybe indeed its best to ask who one is before asking what one's cultural identity is, and that's most readily done by people who have experience with dual consciousness?"
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/6372#comment-119793