Intercultural Situations

Intercultural Situations: Describing a Person from a Different Culture
My friend Pio is an information technology consultant who was born and raised in India. He spent ten years in a Catholic seminary in India before leaving and getting a job in IT. He had always been good at math, and after leaving the seminary he enrolled in IT courses. After completing his courses, he was recruited by American headhunters who were in Chennai, where he lived, looking for Indian IT workers. The headhunters asked him if he would come to work for a major banking firm in America. Pio’s father insisted that he take the job and Pio complied with his father’s wishes. His father’s reasoning was that Pio would earn good money in America and would be able to provide financial support for his family back home in Chennai, especially since his father could not depend upon Pio’s brothers who were no account. His father owned a small grocery store but his sons were not good at managing the business and his father saw the recruiters as a God-given opportunity to help make sure the family did not lose everything in the coming years.
So Pio traveled to America—to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to be exact. He began his career as an IT worker here, but he was quite miserable. He felt alone in America and was very sensitive about his appearance and how he sounded. Like many Indians, he had learned English at school, but his accent was thick and the American environment was not like life in Chennai. After several months he was homesick and told his recruiters that he wanted to go home. They tried to understand what the problem was and Pio told them that Ann Arbor was too quiet—he felt like he was suffocating. He asked at the very least for a change—so he was sent to New York City. Pio instantly felt at home as soon as he stepped off the subway in NYC. It was noisy, stinky and chaotic. He felt right at home.
He worked in NYC for a few years in the 1990s. Every month he was sending most of his paycheck home to support his family in Chennai. What he had left he used for rent and food and clothes. After a few years, however, he was again drained and anxious. He went to his bosses and told them he could not keep working there. Pio was a good, hard worker and his bosses did not want to lose him so they asked what the problem was and he told them he had hardly any money because of his situation and he was not able to save anything for himself. His bosses were astounded as Pio was receiving a good paycheck at the time, but Pio told them he saw only a percentage of that because his recruiters took a big cut of his pay. His bosses realized that they needed to get Pio out of whatever contract he was in with his headhunters and they hired him on their own and gave him a nice raise. Pio was happy once again.
Then, in 2001, Pio was called by his father and told that he had to come home to Chennai. His father had found a wife for Pio and Pio was to be married. Pio said okay to his father and returned home for his wedding. The first time he ever saw his wife was on his wedding day. But this was not unusual to Pio because that is the custom in India for many people even today: one’s parents choose one’s spouse. So Pio 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 ton 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 to New York. Everything shut down. Security went into overdrive. When Pio and his wife were finally able to board a flight to NYC, all of the spices that his wife’s family had packed to go with them were tossed into the trash can—not allowed under the new rules of travel in the wake of 9/11.
Pio returned home to his apartment in New York City. His job, however, would not be there, for his office building had been just blocks from Ground Zero and no one was getting in or out of that area. His company therefore relocated him to its offices in St. Louis. While in St. Louis, Pio began looking for a new job so that he could better his career. Now that he was married, he wanted to start thinking about the future of his own family. He was hired to work for another company and then after a few more years another surprise came: the company wanted him to manage a team back in India. By this time, Pio had two young children. He talked it over with his wife and they decided to make the move back to India. His wife and children were not exactly thrilled with the idea because they did not like giving up American life for India—but they all get on board with the idea and Pio thought it would be good for his career to his this on his resume.
The post took him to a state in India that he did not grow up where the people spoke a different language. Pio’s language in South India was Tamil. But where he was sent the language was Telegu and the skin color of the people was lighter. In India, skin color is a big issue for people. Those in the north of India are much fairer skinned than those in the south who are much darker. Pio has dark skin color, so in his job in India, he and his wife felt like they stuck out as it was obvious that they were not from that state but were from the south. There is a lot of prejudice in India against people who are from other states and so Pio and his family experienced some tension. They could speak English with other English-speakers there, but they did not speak much of the national language (Hindi) or the local language, so there was this cultural roadblock as well. In fact, Pio and his family felt more out of place in the city where they lived—Hyderabad—than they did living in America. While they were in India, Pio’s wife had her third child and the doctors told her she could not have any more or she would die. So Pio and his wife have not had any more children, but to this day he suspects that the doctors there only said this because it is part of the national cultural policy to promote birth control and to encourage families to have only one child. One of the popular sayings in India is: “We two, ours one”—meaning the parents are two and they have one child and that is all they will have. Many families in India thus only have one child. It is not illegal to have more but the popular culture does not encourage it.
After a year in India, Pio and his family wanted to return to the U.S. so Pio told his work that he wanted out of India but they were not really wanting to move him so he applied for a different job with the Kroger Company and was hired. He worked for Kroger for a few years as a manager back in the U.S. and then took a job as a consultant and now he travels around to a new city each month to help out with consultancy work.
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…(he does not know how many generations back so it is great, etc.) grandfather 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 there came word that there were two foreigners dressed in black robes who were walking through the country. The old man sent for them and asked if they could heal the boy. The men dressed in black robes were Catholic missionaries from Europe. When they arrived at the old man’s village they prayed over the boy and the boy got up and asked for something to eat. The old man was overjoyed and told the priests that they could have whatever they wanted: he told them to pick one of his wives and they could have them as their own. The priests said they did not want that, all they wanted was the old man’s soul. He was told he could have one wife, not several, and the old man said that was fine and so the old man became a Catholic—and because he was the leader of his village all of the people in his village converted to Catholicism as well. The other Indians in the area surrounding the village were angry and they told the old man they would not marry their daughters to any of the children in that old man’s village so long as they remained Catholic but the old man said that was all right with him. The village remained Catholic and so too did all the generations that followed. In India there are many pockets of Catholicism like this throughout the country. And so Pio was descended from that old man and his village.
Back in the U.S. Pio is quite happy to be an “American.” He still sends money home to his family but he makes a lot as a consultant, too, so he is doing quite well for himself and his family. He lives in a big house in a neighborhood of other big houses where there are several foreigners like himself living. When his sister got married back in India, Pio provided the dowry for her, as his father did not have any money to provide for it.