One of my experiences, Shanks, makes me wonder what Indians think about "Indian", or, for that matter, what members of any human grouping think about their own group.
My wife became friends, through her work, with an Indian physician. Her husband is an engineer and they have two young sons, who attended a very exclusive private school here (they are very well off). Her mother lives with them and does all the housekeeping and cooking (she's a wonderful cook) and takes charge of the boys; she watches them like a hawk while they do their homework and, although she understands none of it, not being an educated woman and not speaking English very well, and they being quite advanced in their studies, if she thinks they are slacking or fooling around, she lets them have it with a stick.
The wife and her mother are from northern India and speak Hindi; her husband is from southern India and speaks one of the southern languages. (Their marriage was arranged by their parents.) He gets along OK in Hindi, but she and her mother do not know his language very well. They speak mostly English with the boys and some Hindi, but I'm not sure if the boys know any of their father's language.
Thanks to the grandmother, at home they eat Indian food only; the boys eat American food at school and outside the home, but the parents ordinarily do not. We spent a weekend with them at their new home in Connecticut, where they moved after her contract in Baltimore lapsed, and ate nothing but Indian food, cooked by the grandmother, and had a wonderful time. We noticed, however, that the boys, although very respectful and deferential to their elders, seemed to be somewhat dissatisfied with the fact that they live in a sort of artificial Indian island in the midst of Connecticut. We also learned that on the 2 or 3 occasions when they took the boys to India to visit family, the boys' reactions were very negative -- they absolutely hated Bombay (where they stayed with her brother and his family, crowded into a too-small apartment) and they didn't like their paternal grandparents' home in the country (from pictures it looks like a substantial estate) in south India. They hated the heat, the flies, the smells, the fact they couldn't understand anyone -- in short, it appears they are too Americanized, at least at the age they were then (12 and 9).
My wife and I have often remarked that it's a shame that their privileged upper-income life in America seems to have spoiled them for appreciating their ancestral land. They seem somehow to be more Indian here than there, and maybe don't care to be Indian.
Comments?
