Farmers from Haryana

(another post from Allen)

UPDATED (7/20): link to article on NPR where Secretary of State Clinton talks about cultural differences between the US and India

So yesterday I met some guys staying in the room next to ours at the guest house. I met four of them, the other was asleep, and I soon found out that the other 5 were out walking around. Once a year, they pile into a van and take off for a week to travel around. They are all from the same village in Haryana, about 80 km from Chandigargh and 350km from Pakistan. They were all very nice and tried very hard to push whiskey on me, but I politely refused. They were actually quite shocked by this, because I think they thought that Americans do nothing but drink and fornicate.

I found their questions about America to be extremely open and sincere, and frankly blunt in ways that we would never talk to strangers. Most of their questions I was able to explain using the logic that just as Hindi movies are not like real life American movies are also not like real life. People in Delhi don't spontaneously burst into choreographed dance numbers, and people in America don't fight evil robots from the future. Movies and real life are different. That said, here's a taste of the kind of point blank questions they were asking and my answers.

"Do women in America all wear tiny clothes all the time?" No. they don't. They dress normally and do normal things.

"Do Americans have sex all the time?" No. They work. They have families. They live normal lives.

"Are you married?" Yes.
"How many girlfriends do you have?" I just told you I was married.
"Yes, but girlfriends? Do you have Indian girlfriends?" No. I am married. I just told you that.

You can sort of see where the conversation was going. Things that for us would seem tremendously awkward were to them perfectly normal to speak about openly.

(Here is a link to an NPR article where Secretary of State Clinton fielded similar questions. Here response was: "If Hollywood and Bollywood were how we all lived our lives, that would surprise me. And yet it's often the way our cultures are conveyed, isn't it?" she said. "People watching a Bollywood movie in some other part of Asia think everybody in India is beautiful, and they have dramatic lives and happy endings. And if you were to watch American TV and our movies, you think we don't wear clothes and we spend a lot of time fighting each other.")

The oldest was 39, he has 5 children. 4 girls and a boy. The boy is the youngest. The next oldest farmer had 2 children, one girl and one boy. The boy is the youngest. Notice the pattern yet? It seems that most folks here just keep having kids until they get a boy and then they stop. If they get a boy on the first try they might go for a second child, but that seems rare. Having girls is bad luck. WTF, right?

So I sort of knew this already, and asked each of them if the boy was the youngest and wasn't surprised by their answers. I also asked why their wives weren't with them, to which they replied that their wives don't leave the village - as if that was an obvious statement of fact. Once a year or so, their wives might go to a neighboring village to visit their parents and brothers, but they won't go travelling around like these men do...

I also asked if they drink whiskey at home, to which there was a resounding NO. "If we did, our fathers and wives and brothers would beat us". It seems like this is their annual, leave town go get drunk and make an ass out of yourself trip where no one will know you and report to your family about what you have done and then go back home to being a respectable member of society again.....

Kind of crazy. With 10 of them in that tiny room, it seemed as if they were taking turns as to who could sleep. When the other five came back, Lars and I left, because there wasn’t room for 10 people to be in that room, let alone 12 and the "changing of the guard" seemed mildly complicated.

We also talked about movies and tv shows. They all really like American Action movies and professional wrestling. They were quite disappointed that the only wrestlers we were able to name were Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and "The Rock". None of which are actively wrestling nowadays..... They also really like the discovery channel show "Man vs. Wild".

Anyhow, it was really great practice for my Hindi. Lars took a bunch of pictures that I hope will soon be on his blog (and maybe ours too). Once the picture taking got started, it kept going for quite some time. They were pretty into it and from the pictures you'd either think that we were Photoshopped into them or that we had been best friends for years. It was kind of funny.