When I moved to India briefly to work as a teacher, I never expected my life would change like it did. I am back in Melbourne now, but I brought back with me an Indian-origin husband, a beautiful Indian-Australian son, and a deeply enhanced understanding and appreciation of Indian culture.
Here are some important things I’ve learned about Indian culture.
Eating with your hand
Indians often eat their food with their hand, which seems messy, but is actually a great experience and makes eating more enjoyable if you try it. It’s kind hard to explain, but the food tastes better when you mix it with your hand. You then have a multisensorial experience of tasting, smelling and feeling the food.
Hospitality and selflessness are hallmarks of Indian culture
There is a huge difference between our trips home to India, versus going to my home town in Australia. When we return to India for a holiday with our children, we always have multiple people offering for us to stay with them, which actually puts them out quite a bit, as they may need their children to move out of their bedrooms, buy and cook more food, and generally reorganise their lives to accommodate us. This is absolutely never seen as an imposition, and in fact it always feels as though our friends and family are extremely happy to have us in their home. The reason this strikes me as so significant is that Australians do not offer this kind of hospitality, especially to people with children. I come from Geelong, a town an hour from Melbourne where I have some family and many friends who live there, but whenever I travel back I stay in a hotel, as it’s too much for people to offer to accommodate a family of 4. However in India, I have too many offers from people to stay with them, and end up disappointing some people who we can’t stay with.
Many Indians are vegetarian which means SO much amazing food!
I was very surprised to notice in India that there would be a sign on a restaurant – Non-veg – if they serve meat, as most restaurants are vegetarian. In Australia, you have to go hunting to find a vegetarian restaurant. I then became friends with a Hindu family who are vegetarian. I used to go to their place for dinner at least a couple of times a week. I would always be served a bunch of vegetarian dishes, at least 4 or 5, plus rice and chapati or puri. Every time I went there would be more new dishes that I hadn’t tried before. Eventually, I did have the same dish more than once, and avial from Kerala became one of my favourites.
Remove your shoes when you enter an Indian home
I learned pretty quickly in India that’s no-one wears shoes that have been walking around outside, inside a home. Thinking about it, I realised it makes a lot of sense: outdoors, there’s a lot of dirt, and even worse on the ground, as animals and vehicles move around outside and leave behind all kinds of waste. If we don’t remove our shoes when we come into a home, this mess is brought inside. In our home my husband always wears slippers (or thongs as we call them in Australia) inside the house. I have now learned to always take my shoes off when I enter someone else’s house. A good sign that I should do that, is if I see shoes near the door, it’s the norm to remove your shoes in this house. My hint – if you see a pile of shoes anywhere, remove yours. Sometimes you might notice this outside a shop too.
Indians wash themselves with water when they use the bathroom
When I first went to a toilet in India I realised there was no toilet paper, but there was a little water spray gun called a health faucet to wash myself. I thought, this is weird – where’s the toilet paper? However, I reflected that when we get something messy on our hands, we use water to wash it. We don’t just wipe it with paper. So I have realised this is a much better way to do it, and we even have a health faucet installed in our toilet in Melbourne.