An ongoing "Culture Shock"!

When we are born and brought up in one country and are made/choose to live in another-especially very much away, in another continent-“culture shock” occurs-well, kind of…. At least that’s what I read somewhere recently. Now, after two years, I can say that yes that “shock” did occur to me, - though I didn’t know what it was called in the initial days-in understanding the language, the ways and gestures and phrases, and in the ever going attempt to fit into the new community.

But we can’t really blame ourselves if we try to find “Indian-ism” or “non-Indian-ism” in each and every thing we find around us. Be it good or bad. We tend to compare it with the Indian counter-part we are familiar with. Every sentence tends to start with “In India…” or “Imagine, if this happened in India...” but as I said, we can’t be blamed; it’s the result of culture shock.

Like this…At first my jaw dropped, when County Councils put plants with flowers in full-bloom on every roundabout overnight, every spring/summer. And naturally I started thinking “If this happened in India…”.

At the first streak of sunlight, when people here welcome sun in almost-beach-costumes, I think “In India, where we have sun thru out the year, if people walked like this!”.

In summer when roses in red, yellow and cream and pink were in full bloom in almost every sidewalk, I wondered, why people didn’t even try to pluck one. I badly wanted to, but felt as the odd one trying that and calmed myself by sniffing them again and again. May be that “plucking” instinct was part of my Indian-ism!

I reminded myself again and again to say “please”, “thank you”, “sorry” and “excuse me” several times a day. Sometimes I even said “excuse me” five minutes after sneezing – but still, I was trying!

I wondered why the roads were so quiet, even at peak traffic. Then I realized, people never honk, here! They really CAN wait in the traffic for hours, without honking! I also realized that sometimes instead, they showed fingers! In India, we just yelled at each other!

Ireland just had its General election last month. It elected its new Taoiseach (pronounced as T-saak, I think!) aka Prime minister. And guess what, the polling percentage was much much less. Common people seemed least bothered about politicians and elections. They looked as if they were really tired of them! And the excitement of election and new government was seen only in newspaper headlines and TV news!

Having been in India for 27 yrs, I really expected a democratic election to be shaking the country to its roots with banners and marches and everything. Nope... nothing… nothing at all, when compared to the “election-quakes” in India!! There were small square boards on electric poles, and that too were removed just 2-3 days after election! In India, every wall would have been like this:

<------- booked by INC(I) or CPI(M) till 2020---------->

Another thing which made me feel “the shock” was, at the end of every supermarket bill, I could find “you purchased so much Irish products” and all the Irish products were marked with a *. When I first saw it, I thought “Wow, that info is cool”, though it didn’t change anything I bought. But eventually I started looking, how many Irish products I bought and what were they.

In newspapers and in international /national news, the importance to an Irish citizen was given as addressing as “Irishman” not as “Co. Westmeath man” or “Co. Roscommon man”. And I wondered, why in India, we were never referred as “Indian” in newspapers but only as “Kerlalite”, “Tamilian”, “Kannadiga”, “Madrassi” etc…

But again, it’s not my fault that I think like that. It’s just the “culture-shock” I am still feeling, and may feel always!