I was in Dubai. I was sitting by the JBR beach front which is one of the most visited public beaches in the city. Suddenly, a man came and sat next to me, and started talking to me, so I turned to him and I answered. Then I turned back and I asked myself, "Why is he talking to me?”. Suddenly, I realised,“Shetal, you're becoming Indian.” So I turned to the man and I said, "Sorry, I live in a country where we have been guided that we don't speak to strangers.” In India, it is not that people don't speak to strangers or each other at all; though starting a conversation happens in a much more framed and thought over manner. I was not expecting this man as a stranger to come and talk to me. However, because I have spent my early youth in the Gulf though an other country where that type of behaviour is totally normal as there are Arabs and expatriates from various countries crossing each other regularly. However, my mental programming has changed soon after shifting base from Dubai, U.A.E. to Mumbai, India. My brain has been rewired, because during the last one and half decade I've lived in a secular country in south of Asia which is called India.
When you move to a different country, there are three ways that you can relate to the culture: you can confront, complain, or conform. When you confront, you strongly believe that your behaviours are the right ones. When you complain, you mostly isolate yourself into social bubbles of foreigners living in social structures with the society. And finally when you confront, you adapt your way to behave to the whole society, then you can truly benefit from diversity. But that implies that you are observing, learning, understanding the behaviours of others and adapting your own to fit yourself in the behaviours of the society you're in.
I was in the east of Saudi Arabia, in a beautiful region outside of Mecca visiting the beautiful region where the beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) first received revelations and divine messages revealed by angel Gabriel from 609-632 C.E. in a cave on Mount Hira (a.k.a. Jabal an-Nour), near Mecca. After the guided tour, we asked some more questions to the guide as he was explaining us with passion about the importance of the cave and then suddenly he stopped. He took a step to my friend he shook him. And then he looked at me and said, "Why ishe not interested in what I'm saying?" Because he was not getting the emotional feedback he was used to receive. He was seeing his emotional feedback through his own cultural glasses. The fact that my friend had a neutral face on what it would mean if someone from his culture would have that face and that would mean that the person was not interested or didn't want to be there. And we all see the world through cultural glasses.The lens through which your brain sees the world shapes your reality. If you can change the lens, not only can you change the way your brain perceives behaviours, but you can change the way people relate to cultural differences. Embedded within that statement is the key to benefiting from diversity.
Gender equality and women empowerment in India and across the world has been an important consideration from many years now. There are strict reservations for female candidates in education, profession, politics and much more. However, the reason for such consideration is that the governments are putting in place a social culture where women and men are considered with similar authorities and this is equality of result. Everyone do not get similar opportunities to flourish to their complete potential, but the result is that we still have a balance in society. We enforce diversity, and there is a good reason to do this. Cultural diversity increases problem-solving ability. Itincreases creativity and innovation. The real challenge, to make people being able to communicate well together. And this done majorly through explaining cultural differences.
Most people around the world are raised with teachings that they will contribute to a group or society and interdependent on their members. This affects the way people behave. Other parts of the world, especially the Western world, children are raised to be independent and to be self-sufficient, and create an independent individual in society, and it changes their behaviours.
The Difference
The basic principle tells a lot about how we are going to expect a friendship to look like. In Indian culture the friendship is much stronger.People are closely bound and dependent on each other, invited to every event or celebration which the very good friend will do. However, in other cultures, friendship are distant. On asking a Scandinavian about what a good friend was like they will probably reply "It is someone I can sit in silence in a room and feel comfortable." If you tell this to an Indian, they won't understand what the principle is. This is about friendship, love, and contact with people is one of the six basic human needs. If you're not able to see how this friendship and love is communicated to you because you are blinded by your culturalglasses, you will spend years believing you have no friends. You will spend years believing that people are rejecting you. It is about changing these cultural glasses. This is when you know that an Indian bus stop is full and that you need to stand.
What happens if you sit in the middle?
It could very well be that one of the two persons stands up, takes a step aside, starts playing on his phone. Now, what if you look different?What if you're wearing a religious symbol? How easy it is to believe that the person has moved away because you're of a different skin colour or of a different religion? A typical cultural misunderstanding and a very basic of human interactions: you've came into the personal space of someone who has a much bigger personal space. In most cultures in the world, there's place for 4 people on that bench. Not understanding these very subtle physical differences with people will actually lead to lot of miscommunication.
It is quite understood and seen prominently in cultures also being ableto feel the distance between people which varies in every culture not to forget to keep politeness as priority. Politeness is a concept which isvery much culturally related. It's a group of norms and social codes that everyone obeys to, so that communication goes well in the society and in certain societies it is very strict.
You change the way - you're changing the words in the sentence.
In other places, politeness might only mean not to disturb others, to leave more space, both in friendship and physical space. And if you happen to move to another country where there is no one who definesyou what politeness means, how can you expect that someone will behave.
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