I've been trying for some time to write something insightful that captures what it's like to be a foreigner living and working in India, especially village India. It's still not where I want it to be, but there's less than a month left in Bhorugram, so it's time to start posting. Some of you have parallel experiences, most notably Justin & Marjorie, but this is different from the India you'll experience as a tourist. It's also very different from India as I've known her, because most of my experience is in Mumbai with my relatives. Generalizing to India from Mumbai is like generalizing to America from New York City.
Let's take the good first. Number one on that list is improved patience. My ability to handle delay, particularly long car trips or half-hour periods just spent sitting and waiting, has grown dramatically. As you know, in the US five minutes of no activity is sufficient excuse for me to pull out the phone and check my email. Here, there being neither email nor books on tape nor any other distraction, you sit and you watch the shrubbery. It does leave a lot of time for thinking and planning, which is very nice.
A close second is an appreciation for the basics of life -- eating when you want to, sleeping when you want to, not having wildlife right outside your door, and not having effluent everywhere. I'm going to try to do another panorama of main street in Bhorugram, just so you can see the level of shack-itude that exists in the most-cared-for village in this district. You'll see this level of poverty even in the big cities, and you can't help but realize how much we've all won the lottery to have been born in the USA.
On the major downsides of being an expat, the #1 is isolation. I'm learning a little Hindi, but not enough to understand a rapid conversation conducted with use of slang/imperfect grammar. I still can't read Devangari script, either. Combine this with the need to keep at least some distance between me and the staff (see future entry about hierarchies), and it can get really lonely. The availability of Internet and at least the occasional cheap phone call home (neither of which would have been available here five years ago) have helped with this a lot. Nevertheless, if I seem more talkative than usual by blog and/or email, it's because this is a lifeline for me. This is my only chance to communicate about something beyond basic physical needs or my work.
The other big kicker is Indian social mores, which differ in two major ways from what we're used to back home. One, EVERYONE asks you how much your possessions cost and how much you make. It's supposed to be a way of placing you in society. However, the problem is that they translate any dollar figure into rupees, and then assume you can buy as much in the US as you could here with those same rupees. As such, my laptop could probably buy a house. Dodging those is hard without being at least a little rude to your conversant, and people are already nervous about talking with the Doctor
sahib as it is.
Interestingly, this contrasts with social weirdness the second: laughing/staring at people is somehow not considered as rude as we would think it. Every time I walk into the mess or into the colony where I stay, I face a wave of giggling. If I dare to actually say something in Hindi, it gets repeated back and forth for ten minutes or more. When there's not giggling, it's goggle-eyed stares from a room full of kids and adults. (Mind you, it's worse for women -- Maggie had people actually following her around and taking pictures.) Could I shout at people? Sure. But I spend my entire day shouting at people as it is, just to get the basic work done. There's only so much angry you can do in a single day.
Finally, privacy. Yes, it's a communal culture and there isn't much of it. This, I know. I did not expect that it extends to someone constantly looking over my shoulder when I'm trying to write emails/blogs/whatever. I have had to dish out some major scoldings to our data entry operators for what were (I think) innocently curious attempts to read personal emails. They look like hurt little puppies afterwards, and I have no way to explain to them the concept of differing cultures.
It's been a good learning experience overall, and with this week's increase in the rate of work, I'm not having as many doubts about my value to the project. I'll still be glad to leave it behind and come back to Jennifer, the comforts of "civilization", and just being ordinary again.
Postscript: In between writing this and posting it, a friend sent me a link to
her niece's blog from Botswana. Odd how many things are not unique to India...
