Tuesday, October 15, 2013

An Indian on Indians. An excerpt

Suddenly it’s like the world has changed, I have to quickly adapt to this new environment or be lost, it  amazes me how quickly we as humans do adapt when thrown into the fire. I have people from all over the world in my class, so it’s definitely a new experience for all of us, suddenly we all find ourselves having to adjust to a new culture, language, food, not to mention climate. Well maybe not everybody has to adjust to the climate, but for us Indians, it’s definitely a shift. A Kashmiri girl was telling me about how depressed she was when she first came to Paris, while Kashmir is just as cold and snowy it’s not gloomy and depressing, which to me was surprising considering how conflict ridden that area has been… shows how little I know about my own country.
On the other hand there’s a Telagu girl who has gone down to Nice to study finance who  messaged me, not to complain about the weather, but about the Tamilian roommate who screwed her over and has landed her in a pickle over her accommodation and so she will never trust a Tamilian again… It’s funny how the community we’re from determines the way we respond to situations. Each group of people in India has a particular stereotype and while we would like to dispel them as untrue, they usually aren’t. For example, people from Andhra Pradesh are supposed to be very emotional, they take things personally. So if they love you they’ll do anything for you and if they hate you, you’d better watch out. They’ve also got a great sense of humor and will often use emotion to manipulate a situation. People from Kerala are supposed to be very clannish. They will do anything to help their own people and promote themselves, they’re also very hardworking and ambitious, they’re more likely to take the lowest pay just to undercut the competition and get the job… outside of Kerala, in Kerala they’re perpetually on strike. On the other hand you have Mangaloreans, my own people, who have a reputation for either being party animals and sporting the crab mentality, which is that you will do anything to pull other people down and try to push yourself to the top. Mangaloreans are quite likely to pull their own family down just to get ahead.

[Taken from a Yellow Rabbit]

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