There’s no particular reason for headlining this picture other than I took it yesterday at a bird sanctuary. Not exactly what we’d see around Lyday Farms.
I’m writing this in the aftermath of listening to Dubya’s speech escalating the war in Iraq, so I’m a little morose. I’m determined to put it aside for awhile and continue to enjoy our experiences here, but it’s hard to put aside the thoughts of the men and women who are fighting and dying (soldiers and civilians alike).
There are many countries in the world in which the words “yes or no” have various shades of meaning. In Japan, for example, most of us know that “Hai, hai” could mean anything from “absolutely not” to “I don’t really know what you said, but saying yes will give me some time to think about it”. I’ve noticed that here in India we have a version of the same thing, but with several twists. Let me give one small example. The other morning I went down for the breakfast buffet about 7:00. I was the only guest in the dining room and I got even more attention that usual. After being seated, the young Indian girl asked if there was anything else that she could do for me. I replied, “Yes, I’d really like a newspaper.” She asked, “which one?” I asked for the Indian Times and then asked if they had the International Herald Tribune. She said, “certainly, I’ll get them for you right away.”
I was well through my breakfast when I remembered that I hadn’t gotten the newspapers, and rather than ask the young lady again, I decided to dash up to the concierge and get them myself. The concierge politely informed me that the newspapers never come until about an hour later, and that they never got the International Herald Tribune. After several similar instances, I was reading a book I’d brought along which dealt in part with social norms in Indian culture. The book said, amoung other things, that Indians are highly disinclined to ever say no to a request of any kind, as it would cause them to lose face and give offense to the other party. One wonders how effective communications ever occurs. I’m reminded of a business colleague who commented about China, that his view of enlightenment regarding China for a gringo was to understand that he was never going to understand.
Another incident that gives insight into Indian culture or perhaps the culture of this particular hotel, I’ll refer to it as “The Great Pepper Incident”. S. and I checked in at the hotel about 2:30 PM, and I, as usual, was hungry while S. wanted to rest. I went to the restaurant for something to tide me over until dinner. My club sandwich and fries appeared promptly, and I, without thinking, went to the salt and pepper shaker for a dose all around. The pepper shaker was empty and I thought the sandwich needed some. I called the waitress over and asked her to either refill it or give me a new shaker and thought nothing more about it. At the end of the meal the duty manager of the restaurant appeared and apologized at length about the pepper shaker and prayed that they would have the chance to serve me again and make up for the mistake. I thought, “this is a little odd, but it’s India”.
That night, S. and I ate in the high end Indian food restaurant and had a good, but not great, meal (perhaps we ordered badly), but as I asked for the check, a young man appeared saying he was the restaurant manager and had heard about the problem with the pepper earlier in the day and wanted to make sure that our meal tonight was not effected by that “problem”. I assured him I held no grudges about the absence of pepper and thought again that this was a little odd, but the bottle of wine had done it’s job and S. and I proceeded to bed.
The next afternoon, I had repaired to the bar for an early libation after a great massage and was in a particularly mellow mood. This mood was deepened further by a large gin with a splash of tonic. I struck up a conversation with the barman, as is my wont, asking about the Hindi language. We chatted at some length very amiably before he said, “I’m glad to see the problem with the pepper yesterday hasn’t caused you to think badly of us. I thought, at first, that I had misheard, but I hadn’t. The empty pepper shaker had traveled from my club sandwich to the duty manager, to the restaurant manager, to the barman. I responded, “ it was only a tiny, tiny problem not even worth a mention”. He seemed relieved and replied, “we don’t want to have even tiny problems here”.
Perhaps there’s much still to be learned from the east.
