Monday, August 20, 2007

Culture shock

Its been two weeks now. And I am coming in terms with the situations. The things are different here. The culture, lifestyle, socialism - everything. To be honest, the society seems more organised, more professional. Thats the good part; but that makes them more self-conscious and to some extent more conservative in the thinking process. I mean, they are so organised that they don't need to use their brain for everyday situations, and thats why they become dumb if life the daily routine goes little astray. Overall, I must admit its better to be organised.
The most striking part for me was traffic. India you never think so much of traffic rules. Especially in places like Pune, Mumbai, following traffic rules may sometime causes accidents, because nobody ever obeys them. But here the story is just the opposite. The cars stop at a stop signal even if no one is around. In India if you are confident, you just cross the road dodging the traffic, forget about zebra crossing or pedestrian walk signals. But here if you do that, or rather, I feel guilty in doing that because the traffic is so so so organised and law-abiding.
Second thing that is different is what is called freedom of an individual, i.e., no one is bothered what you are doing, may it be public place, but is is your choice. No one will poke his nose unless you are doing something awfully wrong. And if you ask for help, they are ready to help. May be this is the characteristics of a small college town. Things are different in big cities, as my friend Benny was telling. Thats what I like about small towns - the homely-ness. This weekend I went to Cleveland, OH. And I liked it. An old city, big city. Old buildings, little shabby buildings. People are more casual; they are walking down the road on shabby, or rather commonplace attires, wooden houses, brick roads, and so on. It looks like it has a root. But State College is a mixed culture. Most of them are students. If you take a cross section of the streets, you will found most people are dressed carefully and consciously. They are always busy, and little more populated than a town like this should be. This town seems more urbane than it should be.
But overall, I like State College, after all this is going to be my home for coming few years.

1 comment:

Experiences: Blog by Tilak Amitava Chowdhury said...

I think when people talk about leaving country for opportunity, they never mean that htey are going for a better career where they would do better things to work on. I think they mean that they would get better life. And since work is an important part of our lives ( I think I am incomplete without my work hours added to my life) it also means that the work will be better.

I hope someday India will get there too...just keeping my fingers crossed;-)