I lived in Jaipur during 2012 and, in this post, I will share some of the cultural shocks I experienced in India, which I remember since there were many. India is a bubble apart from the rest of the world when it comes to understanding how this country works, just as the Indians think and live. Logic is of no practical use once you step into Indian territory, and the best thing to do is to try to adapt as you can instead of trying to understand it. So, here is a list of my culture shocks in the country, in India as it really is and as you will find.
The Indian Nodding
The Indian nodding may be already familiar after many funny publications about it or confusing experiences while dealing with it. In daily life in India, it’s difficult for foreigners to understand what an Indian person does want to say when nodding. It literally remembers that Justin Bieber’s lyrics “What do you mean? When your nod head, yes but you want to say no. What do you mean?“
The lack of nightlife
I arrived in India on a Saturday afternoon after about 2 days of travel and my biological clock didn’t even know if it was day or night. I only know that I was in the mood of going out at night, at that time I was still an active party guy, today retired of the nightlife… I arrive at the club with a group of exchange interns, and behold, I see at least 2,000 men and … only 13 women, I counted them one by one, of which seven were foreigners. Due to a fight (a lot of males per square meter), the police closed it, which was around 23:30 at the most. And so it was my first night in India, bars and clubs closing before midnight, if it arrived until 2 or 3 in the morning, it was a lot. Mumbai was the exception, where I saw real nightlife, and even there, the nightlife is not part of Indian culture and many locals do not see it in a positive way.
Many Indian guys go crazy with foreign women
One of the first cultural shocks I had in India was the way that most Indian men stare at women, in that way as if they had never seen a woman in their life. And with foreigners with fair skin, then the fellas go crazy, as described in this post for women traveling in India. In my first week, I was in a restaurant in Jaipur with a Brazilian and a Moroccan girl, and an Indian a few meters away was cursing me: “What do you mean? You have two girls and me, no girl.”. That’s right.
Distance between men and women
In addition to sexual harassment, a distance between men and women is visible in everyday life, whether at work and in any other situation, there is always a certain formality. Schools for girls and boys are seen all over the country, and even in universities, this separation is maintained on campuses and dormitories. It is important to observe this distance, otherwise, an Indian may understand that you, a foreign woman, are being easy just because you are talking to him. Or an Indian woman might understand that I’m flirting with her if I invite her over for coffee.
Vegetarian diet
I didn’t adapt to the vegetarian diet and underestimated how to adapt when living in India for a long time, as I have always been used to barbecue and steaks. I lost about 10 kg while living there. I even found meat, but the local hygiene standards were by no means safe. You can notice when a vegetable has expired, however, a cooked or roasted afresh meat can be eaten without realizing it until you have food poisoning. I didn’t have any poisoning in India because I didn’t take the risk when I saw some colleagues ending up in the hospital for poisoning. As I describe in the post “India for non-vegetarians”, the tip is to look for Punjabi, Afghan, and Tibetan restaurants; and go to the busiest establishments for having inventory turnover.
Bargain all the time
Outside supermarkets, shopping centers and formal retail, prices in most Indian establishments are not formally written. So, you have to bargain, whether it’s taking an autorickshaw, hiring a tour, and everything else you’re paying for. The rule is, first of all, to have an idea of the prices and to negotiate, since it is implicit in the minds of many Indians that foreigners must be overcharged. If you are not aware, they always find a way to take advantage of you. Whenever you buy a product at supermarkets and at local sales, check the product packaging and label for the acronym M.R.P (Maximum Retail Price), which is the maximum price the retailer can charge you.
Customer wants to buy and seller doesn’t want to sell
As Mises rightly described in the book Human Action, in a caste system, a person’s economic condition in no way depends on serving his client and the ability to deliver good services. So, in everyday India, it is normal to see salespeople and service providers who are not at all concerned with providing a professional service, they work for fun, literally. Many demonstrate this attitude of indifference when they have already earned enough and start to cheat, acting completely out of emotion. They can deny selling you something for not liking you or putting the price up there … That’s how they are.
5 Indian minutes
Punctuality is not normal in most of the world, as observed in Latin America and across the African so as Asian continent, but India goes a little further. Five Indian minutes can translate into five hours, five days, five months, five years, five centuries; or never, or something impossible to translate. I advise you to have a little bit of flexibility during your trip, plan your itineraries without sticking to schedules, as you never know what will happen in the next five minutes.
There is never a day like yesterday
If it is to define India in a keyword, I describe it as unpredictable, the opposite extreme of the daily life in which I lived in Switzerland. The chaotic day-to-day, averse to any routine, combined with a completely fluid notion of time makes life in India a box of surprises every single day. There is never a day like the other, and this unpredictability is what stands out most in my memories about India, even when I compare it with what I saw in Eastern Europe, Egypt, South Africa, and other countries where I have been. Never stick to planning what you are going to do hourly.
Chaotic traffic
Certainly, India is not the only country with disorderly traffic, but undoubtedly the chaos of Indian traffic stands out in any comparison. As soon as I left the airport and was driven to the house where I was going to live, I felt in the middle of that crazy race as if the car were just a protective hull. I didn’t know that, on my first day at work, I would ride on the back of a motorcycle of one of my buddies. On the back of a motorcycle in the Jaipur traffic; side by side with cars, motorcycles, autorickshaws, cows, camel, elephant. And nothing was different when crossing the street. Two weeks later, there I was perfectly used to crossing in the middle of everything, and every now and then, walking a few meters from an elephant.
Filth and poor hygiene
Filth and dust is what you see most in India. Urine smell was one of the things I noticed most on the streets in the first two weeks, then you get used to it and forget about the bad smell. It is normal to see people urinating on the ground when walking through the streets, on any tree and wall along the way. The hygiene standards of the vast majority of the Indian population are far below what we are used to in the Western world. You can piss in public, but kissing in public can even lead to jail. My baths on returning home were as if I had come back from a coal mine or an iron smelter. India is not for snowflakes!
As I always say, if you survive India, you survive anywhere in the world. It is almost a military service without going to war, you get used to everything from extreme heat to noises that leave the cities of São Paulo, London, or NYC looking calm. And what were your cultural shocks in India?
Originally posted 2021-06-05 23:07:50.
