Do you have a culture junkie in your midst?

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 11 Mei 2014 | 21.16

Sukanti Ghosh
11 May 2014, 07:28 PM IST

As a person who has lived and worked in several countries around the world, I have always believed in the need to be ready to accept (or even embrace) elements of the culture of the country / city that I am living in at the time. After all, isn't that what true integration is all about? And though, I am not as adept as many people I know in doing this – I, for instance, cannot speak the native languages that are spoken in many of these places - I do have a healthy respect and appreciation for their customs, traditions, religions, cuisine, and in many cases, art and literature. 

Through my journeys over the past four and a half decades, I have always been surprised to find a group of non-residents Bengalis / Indians (or 'Probashis' as we tend to refer to them) who almost pride themselves on being far more orthodox and conservative in their outlook than Bengalis (or Indians) back in India.

Don't get me wrong, I am not for a moment suggesting that there is anything wrong in retaining and celebrating ones traditions or customs. To the contrary, I believe true integration can only happen when you have a strong bedrock of your own culture and cultural values. But then there is a difference between 'clinging onto' and 'celebrating'. And, the former, is the only way I can explain the more than often excessive exuberance of these people in trying to mouth versus of literature at every occasion, breaking into a ditty at the flash of a pan, dressing only in a particular manner, watching only a particular genre of movies, and in repudiating everything that could even be remotely be considered foreign to their ethos or their culture, even to the point of not wanting to be seen with people outside their own community.

I have witnessed this phenomenon at very close quarters time and again: in my formative years, in my teenage years, when I was living in the capital, in sunnier climes in a desert country, when I went back to school in cooler European climes, and even now, in our very own Maximum city. The most visible manifestation of the culture junkie is in the parent who wants his / her children to look-like, speak-like, dress-like and act-like themselves at all times in their limited social milieu, often resulting in the following uncomfortable questions being asked of them, and being unilaterally shot down:

"Sure, we are Bengali (Indian), but do we have to flaunt it at each and every occasion?"

"What is wrong in celebrating Christmas or Thanksgiving (or enjoying Eid Holidays) with my friends if we are living in the US / the UK? 

"Why can't I have poha / peanut butter / bacon and eggs for breakfast?"

"Why do you always want me to wear traditional Indian attire when we go to these functions?"

"Why should I only go out with Indian (or Bengali) men / women? What's wrong if I have a Punjabi (Gujarati, British, Chinese, French…) girlfriend? Or if I choose to marry one of them?"

And while many of these 'beliefs' have long been shed in urban India (and amongst second generation NRIs), the fact is that there are still pockets of resistance in our midst; people who are closed to the idea of change, and in fact wish to cling onto each and every manifestation of their culture with a vengeance: their beliefs, attire, language, music, theater, art, cuisine and literature, lest we – and our children – become any 'less civilized' if we show our willingness to embrace elements of the culture we are living in.

What these people – and equally, those self-appointed guardians of our moral values who often crack down on Valentines' Day celebrations around the country – fail to understand is that our culture, much like our language, is robust and will only be richer if we open up the windows of our mind to change and allow people to reinterpret traditional values in modern day terms.

I remember having an animated conversation with my wife about the same thing recently, and found that one of the most entertaining pieces of literature that she had read (time and again) as a child was a collection of myth-based stories 'Banglar Brotokotha' - that for generations were transmitted orally from one to another – in the hope that people would imbibe the religious and cultural values, ethics and tenets of what is right and wrong that are most dear to us as a people.  I have no doubt that, like all oral traditions, these stories too would have been re- interpreted as they were passed down, as otherwise,  they would have had little ability to be culturally relevant hundreds of years after they were first conceived.

I believe my friends, who I write about today, really need to take a leaf out of their book. Otherwise, in their desire to hold onto culture as they see it / saw in their time and propagate an exact replica of the same to their offspring, they will only end up weakening the very social fabric that culture is meant to embody and strengthen.


Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Do you have a culture junkie in your midst?

Dengan url

http://osteoporosista.blogspot.com/2014/05/do-you-have-culture-junkie-in-your-midst.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Do you have a culture junkie in your midst?

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Do you have a culture junkie in your midst?

sebagai sumbernya

0 komentar:

Posting Komentar

techieblogger.com Techie Blogger Techie Blogger