The vastly curious: cultural collision in rural India

Cultures are so fascinating. When cultures collide dangerous things happen... wars, oppression, violence, Kolkata traffic... or you end up at strangely familiar, perhaps more strange than familiar, birthday parties and weddings in villages in India.

The jeep had long left the entirely relative predictability of the paved roads and daylight by the time we stretched our legs to get out of it. A low wooden door stood open to a small home, quiet and dark among the stark trees and dust. After a round of hand shaking that I had to learn was more like palm touching, we were ushered inside to a narrow room and sat down in plastic lawn chairs facing the door and wall. A gas lamp in the far corner illuminated a few feet of the home and left the people faceless like dark ghosts. Bare feet made ticklish shuffling sounds on the swirly cow dung floor as more guests filed in from outside and around some unseen corner of the house. Aside from a few low remarks as people entered, the dimness of the room seemed to silence our souls. Two figures bearing water bowls moved down the row to wash our hands and we were given small cups of sugared ginger tea, followed by thin plates of puffed rice and sweet milk balls. We munched in peaceful silence.

In the mystery of a cool dark Indian night the room filled. Straw mats were laid on the floor and women, children, and a few men neatly folded themselves in order to fit everyone in on the floor. The narrow room full, a western style cake with icing was brought out and set near the gas lamp where we could nearly sense its shyness from being so out of place. A two year old squirmed and kicked on his mothers lap. A man stood. They began to sing. They sang songs of an unfamiliar beauty making sounds I realized with a tingly pleasure I was hearing for the first time. My friend's father stood and in his restless joking Hindi began to speak about birth, parents raising children, and other words of truth. The two year old had nearly fallen asleep, the women covered their heads, we asked for a blessing for the child from our Father.

The two year old was then roused and made to blow out a candle which it was clear he had no idea how or why he ought to do such a thing. The scene reminded me vaguely of my first time using chopsticks, or drinking butter tea. I simply had no framework for how it should be done. Nonetheless, the goal of smoldering candle completed, the child was given a new shirt and pants which he quickly put on. Cake was passed around and the guests sitting on the floor vanished into the moonlight outside. Low tables materialized in their place and heaping portions of rice were covered in curries and lentils which we scooped with our hands to our mouths. A bowl of water was brought round and poured over our greasy hands. Then we too disappeared into the brilliance of moonlight outside.

As the jeep rattled underneath a starry sky I wondered at such a collision of cultures that would place a birthday cake in a world it didn't belong. I didn't know it at the time, but I would have ample opportunity for such wonder.

In the much more crowded jeep again, another day and time, we bumped our way deep into bare Indian jungle and arrived just as the bus load of young men with drums and loud voices unloaded. The air was pulsing with excitement of people taking their places and we found ourselves in a courtyard pavilioned with leaves and colored clothes and lined with straw mats. We were greeted and taken into the house where we watched a sullen looking girl get adorned with make up and lace and other finery by friends. Out again into the bright sunshine and across a field where the drummers began to set up. I found myself arm in arm with a dark gentle looking Indian woman who spoke to me with her hands and seemed to think it quite natural that we were so close and who drew me closer and dragged me into a circle of women dancing modestly around the much more showy dancing of sweating men. Feet miraculously in time with the wild pounding of the drums, arms linked with strangers, the twirl of saris and scarves, laughter and sunshine and dust and so we danced. My arm partner broke the dancing chain and dragged me over to a crowd of people watching a the groom with yellow stained feet get rubbed with oil and hoisted onto the hip of a young girl. The bride was carried on the hip by a young man and off across the field to the beat of drums and dance of neighbors they went back to the courtyard.

The guests settled on the straw mats under the pavilion and watched silently as the ceremony took place. It was the same ceremony I've seen countless times, same pattern as any wedding in America, only in Hindi. It seemed almost like a surreal pause in the middle of the actual wedding festivities. Vows finished, women rose from the crowd to place flowered garland on the necks of the newly weds. Somewhere the drumming began again and the crowds dispersed to recline and receive snacks on thin paper plates and a small girl with a dress falling off her bony shoulders because it lacked a zipper in the back came closer with her deep still Indian stare.

We ate another curried meal with our hands from plates of dried leaves before piling into the jeep and departing in a cloud of dust. We vanished this time into the shimmery jungle heat and I wondered: what would the birthday, the wedding, indeed the country, have looked like if our cultures had not managed to meet and shake hands?

Curiouser and curiouser. Cultural collision and a country mutates. No wonder India is vastly curious and endearingly confusing.