Clash of Cultures
1

It was a farewell dinner for me. I was leaving for England on a two-year scholarship to learn how to explore for oil. The fact that England had no oil production and nowhere to explore and the University I was going to join had no experienced staff or equipment was beside the point. What mattered was that it was a First World country and we from Third World can always learn something from them. My mother was so upset at the thought of my departure that she had taken to bed. It had occurred to her that I had lived a thousand miles from her for last six years. But it was not across the seven seas she argued. And it did not take three weeks on boat and cost several years salary to travel. I had no answer but the dye was cast. Boat was to depart from Bombay the next day and I had to catch the train for Bombay late that evening. Bhabiji, my sister-in-law, had cooked a super supper with all my favourite dishes and ordered all my favourite sweets from the best bakery in town. The table was croaking under the load of dishes heaped with food.

What with all the final touches to the packing, continuous stream of visitors saying goodbye, nervousness about the first boat trip with not an acquaintance in sight, I was in no mood to have a big dinner. Still, it was Bhabiji’s responsibility to make sure that I was fed enough to last at least the first half of my three week journey because it would take that long to get used to foreign food served on the boat. In good times or bad, Bhabiji was always an insistent host; she insisted you had more helpings till you couldn’t count. She couldn’t bear the thought of not being to able to feed her kid brother-in-law for two years and as if to make up for it she was infused with a new determination. Apart from that, there was another consideration. There was no refrigerator in the house. It was still summer. The left over food would not last even for a day. She had worked much too hard to give it to the beggars; they won’t appreciate it any way. It had to be eaten and I had to eat it. No sooner did I make a dent on the mound on my plate, it was replenished with a new not-so mouthwatering-now dish. This went on for two hours till the horse cart arrived to take me and my luggage to the station. She filled a cotton bag with sweets for me to eat on the long journey on the train. I had no choice. With as many bags in my two hands as I could carry, a heavy tin suitcase and a sleeping bag there was barely enough room for me on the cart. I had to pity the poor horse; I doubted it had ever pulled along so much weight before. On arrival at the station I gave extra tip to the driver with instructions to buy special feed for the horse. He accepted the tip graciously but I got the feeling that the instructions of a budding sahib were not taken seriously.

In due course, the boat arrived in Liverpool. My first order of priority was to find a place to stay. My landlady was a kindly middle-aged woman with a dour husband and four rambunctious children. She told me when showing me the room that she served her students, three in all, breakfast at eight and dinner at six. She expected that we were dressed decently for dinner to set a good example to her children. What she meant by decently is not clear to me to this day. The University was a walking distance. After locating my department, I hastily returned to my new home without seeing anybody there fearing the consequences of being not dressed decently, or worse, being late.

The meal was superb, an improvement on that served on the boat. It could be that by now I was developing a taste for meat, having been a strict vegetarian all my life. Due to my inborn respect for my religious edicts, I am still a strict vegetarian but only when I am in India. The edicts were not intended for foreign consumption, I console myself. The chicken broth was followed by shepherds’ pie with carrots. It was followed by the piece d’resistance of the landlady – chocolate cake baked the same afternoon.

She carefully cut a good size wedge for each person around the table and every one enjoyed it with appropriate expressions of enjoyment. I was greedily eyeing about a quarter of the cake still left on the serving dish when the generous host asked if any one will like the second helping. The dinners with Bhabhiji flashed before my eyes and I graciously declined fully expecting her to insist that I had some more and she serving some on my plate over my vehement protests. Alas! This was not to be. She whisked the dish away. Unlike my dear Bhabhiji, she had a refrigerator to keep it fresh for ever.

I learnt my lesson. Now I ask for second helping whether I need it or not.

2


In my second year I moved to an international students’ residence with sixty students from all over the world, including a few from the nearby towns. A pretty English girl barely out of her teens had recently moved into the residence and we had exchanged polite greetings a couple of times. This intimacy flattered me no end. To impress her with my importance, I invited my research supervisor Dr. Block, an internationally renowned geologist and his wife for dinner at the residence and asked her to join us. The dinner was a simple affair you would expect where you paid four pounds a week for room and three full meals a day. However, the guests seemed to enjoy it. The revered Dr. Block was in a voluble mood, telling us tales of his upbringing in Persia as the only son of an executive of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company and of his struggles to adjust to the British customs when he returned to his parents’ roots. I was quite pleased with myself, not having learnt how good the upper classes in Britain were at pretending. In any event, the focus of my existence in those days was impressed. What more could I wish?

A month later, I received an engraved card in the mail inviting me and my ‘friend’ to a dinner at the Block residence. She was impressed by the address and agreed to be my friend for the evening. We dressed carefully, she in a tight mini dress as was the style of the day and I in my only suit which was quite snug around the waist. We planned to be fashionably late by fifteen minutes but thanks to the vagaries of the bus service, it was almost an hour after due time when we crossed the well-tended grounds and rang the door bell of the Georgian home. We were ushered into a large room where ten of my fellow graduate students and their partners, for the evening at least, were sitting cross-legged on a large oriental carpet around huge trays of Persian delicacies. Indian and Persian culinary arts have developed in tandem and the dishes were familiar to me. There were mouth watering samosas, pakoras of three different kinds, meat balls, chutneys galore and a jug of mango sherbet; A feast for the eyes as well as for the palate. Guests huddled closer to make room for us. We wondered whether our waist bands would stand sitting on the floor but not much could be done. After all, the others had managed it. She hitched her dress up as much as it would go and slid down. I silently prayed the buttons would hold for the evening. However, dress and pants were soon forgotten as the delicacies were loaded on the plates and then transferred past our delighted taste buds to the constricted spaces. We met strange looks when we expressed our admiration for the dinner as the dishes were taken away. We soon found out why.

After a few minutes of literate discussion about the poetry of Omar Khayyam and the Sufi philosophy, the host disappeared into the kitchen and his wife regaled us with the excuses invented by Persian nobles to visit them for a taste of his curries. I was about to ask when will we be honoured with these wonderful dishes when Dr. Block entered the room followed by the maid pushing a trolley. A couple of students tried to get up but he imperially waved them to stay where they were. He placed a huge brass dish of chicken biryani in the middle and four big copper bowls of steaming curries around it. There was enough food for fifty starving teenage boys, leave alone twenty weight conscious adults already stuffed with what was clearly intended as the appetizers. My mouth fell wide open in amazement even though my waist band was digging deep in my belly. It wasn’t long before the mound of food on my plate was touching the ceiling.

It was a short hour before every one belched in true Persian style and the food was cleared away. The discussion now moved to the eating habits of different classes; how upper classes tasted delicately and lower classes shoveled hurriedly as if there was no tomorrow. Every one looked at me when the later point was made. I was much too happy to mind this slight. My friend was looking more and more inviting in her revealing dress that crept higher every time I looked at her.

No sooner had the conversation flagged a little, baklava and espresso magically appeared. Dainty china cups and the elegantly crafted silver coffee jug sat in the middle while a tray of six varieties of baklava loaded with honey and pistachio powder was passed around. It became clear, to me at least, that I was the only one there who had a full appreciation for the heavenly blend of these super sweet cakes and the bitter coffee when I observed that no one else took more than one piece while I took a couple of each kind. Again, the guests looked at me curiously but doing justice to the offering was more important than the good manners of upper classes.

The conversation over coffee turned to opera and the classical music. It was a world I had never visited. Being in the state of soporific stupor induced by my indulgence, I found it hard to go there now and notwithstanding several cups of the strongest coffee I had ever tasted, with or without the dessert of the gods, I dropped in the dream world instead. This had an unfortunate consequence.

When charming Mrs. Block shook me awake late in the evening, every other guest was gone, including my friend. I rubbed my eyes, thanked the hostess, probably in my mother tongue, and staggered to the bus stop. My friend never forgave me the transgression of the etiquette of her culture and I have lived my life regretting that evening.

3

A Canadian company offered me a big salary and the bigger title and we moved to Canada. We settled down to a peaceful conventional life till Supreme Court of Canada ruled the other day that the school boards must permit the students of Sikh faith to carry a kirpan (dagger) in accordance with their beliefs. The Judges being the supreme arbiters of law, who am I to disagree with them. Actually I am quite pleased. I can now practice a command of my religion which I have never practiced, not even in India, my native country. However, the third world countries do not indulge the minorities and religious freedom takes second place to social taboos of the vast majority. Therefore, it was not practical to give up all adornments like clothing, as instructed by Bhagwan Mahavir, the founder of Jainism and an incarnation of God. It is better to let soul return to life one more time than to live in a prison with untouchables and eat food prepared by cooks of the wrong caste on utensils washed by non-Hindus.

Now I can, with Supreme Court’s blessing, practice the dictates of my sect, Digambar (skyclad) Jain, and go naked into the crowds with impunity. If I continued to wear clothes I will have no excuse when I meet the Highest Judge on my way into the next life. All items of clothing must be sent to the Salvation Army for those not lucky enough to be born in my sect. The gift will have to be anonymous because any pretence of generosity is forbidden in the pronouncements made twenty five hundred years ago. The clients of the Army can show off my Armany suits, Gucci shoes and diamond studded rings without acknowledging the source. Indeed, it will give me great pleasure when I think of them proudly walking to the job interviews they secured largely due to largesse unforeseen by the supreme judges. The joy of reducing the number of life cycles by following strictly the laws of my birth religion should far exceeds the discomfort of shivering even on the warmest day of the summer.

Rather than fearing, I look forward to the reaction of my colleagues when I walk buff naked out of the car on to the parking lot and into the office on Monday. Of course there will be complaints from men and screams from women who have lived all their lives being afraid of the human body. I must take a copy of the court decision to prevent violent reactions. Strange looks, sarcastic comments, resistance to raising thermostat I can understand and live with but avoidance of my company and refusal to meet and work with me will bring forth the fury of a Jain scorned which may result in another appeal to the fair-minded judges and several years of salary and bonuses without having to work.

If worse becomes worst and the police is called, I plan to stand firm. I am prepared to be incarcerated in Canada for my beliefs. The jails for white collar non-violent crimes, from what I see on television, are comfortable rooms with their own thermostats. If they force me to wear uniforms so much the better. My lawyers will include the government in my complaint to Human Rights Commission and the compensation will be considerable larger. The money is of no use to an all-sacrificing sky-clad Jain except that larger the amount I hand over to charities, more brownie points I receive when my deeds in this life are being weighed by the bookkeeping gods above. For maximum impact, I will make sure that the charities are based in the country with the weakest currency. How they use the money is not my worry, in this life or the next.

My biggest problem, I fear, is my family. Not considering the prospects of the enactment of laws supporting the tenets of my religion, I married an English woman and we had agnostic/atheistic children of no faith. How will they take to their short, fat, bald, ugly, spouse or father in his late fifties going around in full glory is a concern. Even if they understand the constraints imposed by my religion in light of new legal freedom, will they be able to stand up to the ridicule heaped upon them by their friends? They can disregard the reaction of strangers but not friends. My family members are extroverts and the life loses all meaning if an extrovert is eschewed by her friends. Then there are two adorable grandchildren of the most sensitive age. I do not expect their school buddies to understand their dilemma and imagine fights in school - unsympathetic teachers supporting the bullies. I can see poor babies coming home with tearful eyes and bruised bodies to their mother, the mother who already sides with strangers against this senile Born Again Skyclad who was normal till the judges wrote a judgment without considering the consequences – to her. She will not be able to explain the normal human urge to follow the dictates of the religion; they are too young to understand it anyway. She may have to find some facile explanation which will not be flattering to their grandpa. Worse still, the thought of moving to a far-off place might spring into her mind.

I can face the world out there to follow the basic principles of my religion irrespective of hardships to my person. But I can not bear the thought of my grandchildren being distressed and moving away for good. It is a problem far beyond the capacity of a mere human. This evening, after my simple dinner of chapattis, rice and alloo gobhi, I will ask Bhagwan Mahavir for guidance. I know He will listen to my entreaties and issue a verdict that will lead to the reconciliation of life with nirvana.


A Stray Thought

What will you have, major disasters like the one in Offshore Louisana or continuous pollution by extraction from oil sands? At least the later is predictable and in the long term manageable. In any event nothing beats doing without what will consume
you sooner or later.