Today, with my mother, we saw "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel." It was better than I had expected. I had expected stereotypes--of the Brits and the Indians and the relationship between them--and many of those stereotypes were played out. But it also had a Bollywood feel to it, as well as seriousness: it was a movie full of people in their 60s and 70s faced with how to afford to live in retirement, what to do with their lives, or both. My mother was quite sobered by the lives played by Judy Dench and Bill Nighy and other wonderful actors.
And as my mother told me, I saw different things in the film than she did. I saw, literally, that I'd been in exactly the same place as the actors in the movie. I saw elements of myself, a foreigner going to work in India who tried at times to put up resistance to the sensory overload and cultural difference that India is. It reminded me how embarrassed I am that I felt that way: that I wasn't one of those who embraced it all with positive spirit. One of the characters in the film laments that she never knows what to trust, or whom to trust, in India: the waiter tells her the milk is pasteurized when she knows he's lying; the group were given airbrushed pictures of a palatial building where they would stay, which turned out to be a falling-down grand hotel. And I remember feeling the same way. By the middle of my second year, I was travelling with a friend from the States during the spring break and had completely hit the wall with my cynicism: How did I know if that shawl was really cashmere? They were all pure cashmere, supposedly, but how could they be?
And I suppose that's the question at the heart of our journey into a new culture: Whom do you trust? What can you trust about it? Is the building you're trying to find really around the corner? Does Yes mean Yes when it's said with the speaker's head moving side to side, as if saying No? So many layers of language and culture get in the way.
I use the example of India, but I feel it keenly in my work culture now (which is French). And I know that anyone coming to our country, the US, must feel the same way. We're a country, after all, that only knows one language. What can you trust? Whom can you trust? How do you tell the difference? I think the answer is complex, and lies in meeting people where they are; putting oneself in the other's shoes, to the extent you can.
How do you know whom to trust, in entering any new culture, even at home? Work culture, college culture . . . Patience, positive or optimistic attitude, watchfulness, keen observation, trying to learn the language, somehow showing this new country you value your experience there? All of the above? Tell me your thoughts, because it's important.
