India, Seriously? By Terry Trautman

India, Seriously??

 

That was my response when we received the invitation.  We travel a fair amount and we certainly have in 2015 but India?  My dear wife said, “You’ll have to admit that it’ll be really different.”  No, I didn’t have to admit that at all, I was totally certain of it.  Well, it wasn’t on our bucket list and it was occurring at a busy time of the year (mid-November), but India?  The invitation came from our niece, Amy, a financial professional working and living in Charlotte, NC.  She met, fell in love with and became engaged to a fine young man from Hyderabad,   India.  Karunya Vishnu followed by a five syllable last name has lived in the United States for fourteen years and earned a master’s degree in computer science engineering from the University of Kentucky following an engineering degree earned in India.  It would be a Hindu wedding in India followed by a Christian wedding in Miami in January.  Some people have more than one wedding anniversary but not many have them in the same marriage. 

OK, we’ve got our passports, let’s go!  Not so fast.  Going to India isn’t just accomplished with a well-worn passport.  We also will need visas and shots and pills.  The visa is a requirement, the shots and pills highly recommended.  Ergo we received shots for Hepatitis A and Typhoid along with pills for Malaria.  We received lots of advice about the water not being potable which included not eating anything that is washed with tap water and don’t even think about rinsing your toothbrush from the tap!  Also, if the cap of the bottled water at the restaurant has been unsealed, don’t drink it.  It may have been refilled with tap water.  OK, armed with shots, pills, visas and way too much advice away we went.  We drove to Chicago for a flight to London, spent a night there and then on to Hyderabad leaving Thursday, November 5^th and arriving at the crack of dawn in Hyderabad Saturday, the 7^th.  

A relative of Karunya works at the airport and whisked us through customs bypassing the lines of travelers with great efficiency, well almost.  We were with my wife’s brother and wife (parents of the bride) and I was the fourth of us four to get processed in.  Part of that process is that each of them had their thumbs (both thumbs) scanned for print identification.  I was last and noticed that they forgot to scan my thumbs.  Hey, wait, didn’t you forget to print me??  No, it turns out.  Visitors over 70 are not printed.  I don’t even want to know why….

What follows is not going to be a “we did this”, “we did that” chronology  of our trip.  We experienced an incredible two weeks of sights, of sounds, of dining, of observations of life in India that will certainly go down as not just memorable  but as an unbelievable array of learning experiences.  That’s what I would like to share with you more so than the Taj Mahal, (yes we saw it and yes it is majestic) or many of the other artifacts and evidences of Indian culture and history we visited.

The first interesting tidbit is that India is ten AND A HALF hours ahead    of the United States.  I have no earthly idea why the extra half hour.  India is all on one time zone as it is about one-third the width of the United States.  The big difference is that while it is one-third the size of the United States it has four-times the population!  In a word the cities are crowded but more on that later.

Next, I was surprised by the use of the English language.  I knew there was a large British influence

historically but I didn’t realize how predominate the English language still is.  Basically it can be boiled down to this.  The visual language is English; British English e.g. “color” is spelled “colour” but the aural language is native.  Nearly all of the advertising signs and billboards are English.  The newspapers are English.  But when we turn on the TV, it is native and when the natives speak with each other instead of to us it is native.  I say native on purpose.  India has over twenty languages and, we’re told, over 400 dialects!  That’s dialects, not accents.  The overall national language is Hindu.  In Hyderabad, it is a language called Telegu.  The Telegu alphabet has 54 characters and none that you’d recognize.  The Hindu alphabet is similarly large with unique    characters that are different from Telegu characters. 

The currency is rupees and the rate is about 65 rupees to a dollar.  We soon learned that a quick way to determine dollar value is to add a half to the rupee amount and back up two decimal places.  For example, 500 rupees is about $7.50. 

In the USA most of us natives dress similarly.  A Catholic dresses like a Baptist who dresses like a Methodist who dresses like a Lutheran.  About the only dress demarcation among us is either Amish or Mennonite.  In India, religion is much more identifiable by what people wear.  We would see women in saris (which I think may be the most beautiful clothing ever invented for women to wear) to black burkhas or Abiah’s with only the eyes visible, to some with blue jeans and western dress.  Other than a couple of very obvious tourists, I didn’t see a single pair of women’s shorts.  Even men could be identified by dress from the turbaned Sikhs to men in white gowns and fez toppers.  Once in a great while (and thanks to Karunya) I did see the occasional shorts on men.  Most men though wear sports shirts and slacks.  By the way, Hyderabad is on about the same latitude as Mexico City,

For sure we enjoyed how friendly and engaging everyone was.  We did stand out and proof of that was that during our entire first week in India the only blonde haired women I saw was my wife.  Several times native Indians would come up to us and ask us where we were from and several other times we were asked to pose with families for photos with their families.  One couple wanted to friend us on Facebook.

Another likeable trait was a unique head movement that puzzled us at first.  When talking with natives and family members of the groom, there was often a bit of a disconcerting head nod.  It is neither a ‘yes’ nod or a ‘no’ shake.  I can best describe it as a slight nod in which the left ear nods toward the left shoulder followed by the right ear nodding toward the right shoulder then repeated much like our nods.   Maybe the best one word description would be a wobble of the head.  We found out that it means affirmation or “I enjoy what you are telling me”.  It takes a little practice but it’s a nice and friendly gesture.

Well, I’m just getting started.  Wait until you hear about driving (in our case being driven; don’t even think about driving yourself), an unforgettable elephant ride, getting to the Taj Mahal via camel power, dining Indian style and most of all the wedding itself in which we found out that we were not only guests, we were participants in native dress!

Note:  Look for India, part 2 and part 3 in future issues of  Pen It! Magazine

 

Terry Trautman is a native of Columbus, IN, graduated from Columbus High School in 1956 and Valparaiso University in 1960 with a business and accounting degree.  In 1971 he graduated from the Kelly School of Business at Indiana University with an MBA in Business Administration.  His career path included Irwin Management Co., Cummins Engine Co. and U.S. Bancorp where he served in various financial management positions.

 He is blissfully retired and enjoys an active life currently as Treasurer of the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic and First Lutheran Church both in Columbus.  He and his wife, Linda, sing in both choirs.  His hobbies include photography, scale modeling, traveling, reading, painting and drawing, a love/hate relationship with the game of golf and, more recently, writing.  He is the author of “My Columbus was Different from Yours”, a collection stories about growing up in Columbus, IN in the late 40s and early 50s.