Real Indian Values

So we've been in India for a while now and we've been hearing a lot about "respecting your elders," but what does this rule really entail in Indian culture? After several extremely irritating and offensive incidences, we decided to find out for ourselves.

First off, as we've come to see, in India, everything revolves around hierarchies. You won't find another country in the world with more red tape and/or ridiculous societal BS. The family structure is all about respecting those elder to you. Basically, the youngest kids are at the bottom of the totem pole, while the oldest grandpas are at the top. However, the problem with this rule is that it makes it extremely difficult for you to disagree with or act against anybody in a generation that's above yours, even if they are completely out of line.

Example 1: A certain family member (who will remain unnamed because we respect our elders) repeatedly patronized the three of us. This family member seemed to think that we were all toddlers, simply because the last time he saw us, we were in fact toddlers. He also was extremely awkward towards Kayd, telling her "in India men don't usually shake hands with women," and also had the tenacity to ask her if she knew what a communist was. All these minor bullshits aside, this same family member seemed to think that, because we were toddlers, we were incapable of transporting ourselves around, and even showed up in our driveway one night when we refused to follow him home, so that he could lead us to our home...yeah...didn't really make sense to us either. Oh yeah, he also almost tried to drive the three of us and our friends around drunk.

Obviously our encounter with this chap was pretty damn stressful and annoying. While we didn't want to abrasively and openly offend or go against him (due to our vigilant respecting of elders and adherence to Indian values) we had to make some independent moves which probably pissed him off. Whatever - drunk driving is drunk driving, no matter what country you're in or how old you are. Luckily, every single adult we told this story to completely agreed with our decision to resist this family member's absurd patronizing and irresponsible tactics. True Indians always place rationale over bullshit - no matter what the official rules are, that's what we've been taught and that's what our friends we were with during this incident had told us.

Oh, but wait, there's more! Let's move on to Example 2, which shows that even the people you think you can trust most can suddenly turn hilariously hypocritical. After an evening of relaxation and drinks with some friends (the same friends who had resisted the drunk driving attempts with us in Example 1) it was time to go home. Now, the three of us Americans wouldn't dare drive in India, so we put all our trust into others to keep us safe during our automobile endeavors. However, following this jolly night of chilling and drinking, we once again found ourselves in a ridiculous situation where we were trying to prevent somebody from driving us home under the influence of alcohol. Keep in mind this individual hadn't eaten all day and chugged a final drink on the way to the car. When we asked for the keys to be handed over to a sober driver we were told to take a taxi home, which would have been a suitable alternative, had we known where the hell we were and where the hell we were supposed to go.

Regardless, after a lot of begging and pleading, the sober individual took the keys and we all drove home in silence. On the way back we saw a man lying motionless on the road. He was about ten feet away from his motorcycle and appeared to be dead after being thrown off of his bike. Alcohol related or not, Indian roads have no rules and alcohol effects your judgment and reflexes which are especially crucial when driving in India. It's a no-brainer - obviously we needed a sober driver.

What killed us the most is that when we finally got home we were yelled at by the SOBER DRIVER!?!?!?!!!!? We were told that although we were right on principle (drunk driving = BAD!) but that while in India we needed to "respect our elders."

This was pretty bizarre. For one thing, there were no elders in the vicinity - all of us were around the same age and in the same family generation (read: the "elders" rule did not apply here, ask ANY ADULT IN INDIA - we did!)

Not only this, but if we were right on principle, why the hell would we apologize for anything?! The hypocrisy was overwhelming and insulting - it was all a bit too much to take in.

To sum it up, we'll leave you with the opinion of our family's most respected of elders after we told his about these incidences. While we can't fully transcribe the Bangla our Dadu spoke, here's the gist of it. He laughed a bit, told us we were completely right in our actions, and told us not to worry about fools such as these.

Now that's what I call Indian values.