(or, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Written at Home)
I start this post on a sultry morning, wondering where all the words vanished that I composed so brilliantly as we drove around Holland. Let's see if their remains can reconstruct their essence.
Comparison is a way of thinking and seeing the world, we learn in comparative politics classes. Comparisons are odious, the world tells us. And I say, comparisons are instructive and even inspiring. We have had so many occasions to compare the Netherlands and India, particularly Chennai. The comparisons have favoured both sides in turn and I want to share them with you, starting with the ones in which India and Indians do really well.
Where India and Indians score
Of all the things you start to remember fondly about India and Indians, compassion in interpersonal interactions (I am not talking about inter-communal relations) and customer service stand out. The small attentions and acts of caring that Indians, total strangers, especially traveling strangers will perform for each other--offering medicine, water, food, a helping hand--stand out in sharp contrast to the more transactional style of other cultures. Especially when you fly a western airline. (Of course, there are wonderful, warm and compassionate people everywhere and Indians can be cruel, especially to less fortunate Indians, but still what I am saying will ring true to anyone who has traveled widely.)
It is hard to hold on to this rosy view, however, as you observe the crowd rushing towards airport gates as if the flight will leave without them on board. When the act of compassion is followed by questions about your family history, your lifestyle choices and gratuitous advice on all matters.
The glow returns as you walk through European stores where store staff treat you with an indiscriminate coldness that says: I don’t care if you are going to buy up all our stock, wipe your shoes, pick up after yourself and don’t talk to me. Suddenly the over-attentive girls in white coats in Chennai stores seem marginally less irritating. And one misses the shopkeeper in Bombay or Delhi who says: Look, look, what is the harm in looking? Or even the efficient Nalli or Kumaran floor supervisors who say, yes, what are you looking for, what is your budget and shepherd you to the right place.
One also notices the absence of those proto-relationships one has with service providers and vendors in India (and elsewhere in South Asia). That people do not remember each other in spite of repeated interaction over a long period of time just stuns me. To walk into stores where you have purchased things for many years, to recognize the sales staff but have them look at you (a rare South Asian in a European sea) as if they have never met you before… that actually happens most places outside this region. In South Asia, for the most part, like two points make a line, two interactions (or even one) are enough to form the skeleton of a relationship. This skeletal structure gives them permission to remember my purchasing habits or even that I have not come to the store in a saree, and it gives me permission to say, how are you today and over time, enquire about the family or the business. This is not true of course, of the new malls and department stores, but it still holds good for the family businesses and shops that still dominate retail. It is excellent business practice; I equate being remembered with being able to trust and it is repeat business for the store.
My sociologist friend tried to explain, and I will try and paraphrase from memory (please comment to correct or clarify): she said that Dutch society had never been feudal and like adjacent parts of France and England (across the channel), had always had nuclear families. Not being feudal meant that responsibility for a community and community affiliation clustered around church parishes. In spite of their maritime and commercial history, then, the Dutch did not reach out and did not learn to reach out to people beyond their community. She also said that self-sufficiency and the expectation of self-sufficiency followed from the fact that young people would leave home early to go to town to learn a trade and then build their families with themselve as the starting point. So each one helps themselves and expects that others can take care of themselves too.
My friend stressed the (non-feudal) egalitarian nature of Dutch society. When I asked her to compare it to non-hierarchical American society (and whether that stereotype holds true is another debate altogether), and she said something very interesting (also revealing a common perception of American society held outside that continent): The Dutch are blunt to the point of rudeness because they don’t think anyone will shoot them for it.
[crossposted at It's Just Me.]
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