Staying with an Indian Family for 2 Days
Introduction

As Geert Hofstede notes, there are several cultural dimensions for each nation that influence how people of that nation think, what their values and beliefs are, and what their worldview is. These dimensions include power distance, masculine vs. feminine work ethic, long term orientation, individuality vs. collectivism, and so on (Hofstede Insights). However, some nations are actually quite diverse and are made up of many different smaller states where there are different subcultures within the main culture. India is one such nation in the world. India was really not a united country until the British colonized it and began to unite and gain control over the different states throughout the land in the 19th century (Panikkar). The dominant religion in India is the Hindu religion; however, there are Catholic pockets throughout the land, particularly in the South where there are communities of Thomas Christians—i.e., Catholic communities whose existence dates back to the time when the Apostle Thomas came to India to convert the people in the first century AD (Bayly). The Indian family I stayed with was from one such community in India, though they were not Thomas Christians (the story of how his family converted from Hinduism to Catholicism is told in the section entitled “Religion” further on in this paper). The mother and father were born and raised in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India, and the city where it is said that Thomas was martyred 2000 years ago. I know the Amalraj family from my brother who works with Pio, the head of the family in an IT company. I selected them because their culture is completely different from mine, as they are both Indian and Catholic. The family was happy to allow me to stay with them for 2 days and was very accepting and gracious the entire time. I felt they were as interested in getting to know more about me and my culture as I was in getting to know more about them.

Logistics

It was arranged for me to stay the weekend with the Almaraj family. I would arrive there Friday evening, spend all day Saturday with them and then attend Sunday Mass with them Sunday morning. The Almaraj family is a family of five, consisting of Pio, his wife and their three children. I was given a guest room on the first floor. Because Pio is in the IT industry and has worked in it for 20 years in the US, he has worked his way up to earning a good salary and they have a very nice house. They made me feel right at home—but right away I picked up on a significant cultural difference: they made me remove my shoes when I entered the home. This is not a typical custom for most Americans, but for Indians it is quite common. It is because in India it is a practice to keep dusty shoes out of the living quarters so as to keep the home clean. The Almaraj’s have brought that custom with them to the US.

I took part in the meal preparation Saturday, and sat in the pew with the family on Sunday. The Mass was in Latin and was called the Tridentine Mass, which has been the Mass said in the Church for hundreds of years. Pio explained to me how the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s had ushered in changes that many Catholics were not comfortable with and a new Mass said in the vernacular of every country was introduced. Pio said he grew up going to this new vernacular Mass but in the past five years he discovered the Latin Mass being said in our city and he has been taking his family there ever since: “The hymns are so beautiful and the service is so much more reverent,” he said. Pio did not mind opening up to me about his religion or his own life back in India. We had excellent rapport as we enjoyed one another’s company and found that we shared a very similar sense of humor, so there was a lot of laughing going on. I think it helped that politically we were of the same opinion and so politics became an easy launching pad for us, and once Pio found that we shared the same political opinions he saw me as a sympathetic person and he really seemed to enjoy letting me into his world.

The Religion

The Catholic religion is the oldest of the Christian religions and Pio represents something of a miracle himself. He told me the story of how his family converted to Catholicism. The story of how Pio’s family converted to Catholicism is one that goes back many centuries. It is partly a legend but this is how it was told to Pio: many centuries ago in Chennai before the modern era of human history, Pio’s great great great ancestor (he does not know how many generations back so it is multiple “greats”). This ancestor was the head of a village and a practicing Hindu like most other Indians. He was an old man with many wives and he had only one boy who was to be his heir. However, one day the boy became sick and would not rise from bed and his condition worsened so that he was on the point of death. The old man sought the care and advice of doctors and the Hindu priests and the local counselors but no one could help to heal the boy. Then one day...…not since I had heard about his custom. He said, “For us it makes perfect sense. You Americans all think that love is romantic and you must fall in love and then you go out and break everyone’s hearts and are miserable because your fairy tale romance did not come true. For us we are quite happy to marry who our parents pick out for us. They know, they are old, they are not blind by love and feelings. They see who would be a good match and then they arrange the marriage for their children. It is a good custom and everyone accepts it in India,” he says. I ask him if he will arrange the marriages of his children and he laughs, “How could I? We are in America, not in India. They will only tell me, ‘No way!’ My children are all American. It is horrible! What can I do?” he says laughing. He goes on with his story and tells how he was set up with his new bride and they were married. Part of the wedding present that Pio and his new wife received were a bunch of spices that his wife’s family had spent weeks putting together. However, 9/11 occurred while Pio and his wife were waiting to board their flight back home to New York after the wedding. Everything shut down and security went into overdrive. When Pio and his wife were finally able to board a flight to New York, all of the spices that his wife’s family had packed to go with them were tossed into the trash can by the security teams who would not allow them onto the plane under the new rules of travel in the wake of the tragedy of 9/11. Pio calls it the tragedy of the spices and still seemed to be lamenting the loss even as he was telling the story to me over dinner. And then he said, “Tomorrow we will have hamburgers so that you are not too unhappy with us while you are here. We must keep the American happy and full!” he said, laughing some more.

Conclusion

Pio and his family were very gracious hosts and very welcoming and I feel that I could probably write an entire book about them if given the chance to spend more time with the family. There is a great deal that I could not even include in this paper. The fact is that Pio and his family have very strong Indian characteristics and Catholic characteristics, and there is a blend of Indian and Catholicism that one would not even find in most American Catholic families, I suspect. Overall, however, the family is also very American, particularly when it comes to politics, which is why we developed such good rapport instantly,…