Global Village

We who move to another country try to match ourselves to the locals by adapting their culture and their ways to assimilate ourselves because who wants to voluntarily be a visible minority in a crowd. For example when we go to Tim Hortons to line up for coffee we love to place our order with a smile saying, "Double, Double," which basically boils down to mean 2 sugar and 2 cream. When we look for toilet we ask for 'washroom' or 'restroom' in US, to anybody who says 'thank you' we follow it with a 'you're welcome' in a blink, same way the Australian would say 'no worries' or in India they will say 'mention not'.

And unknowingly we do the same in return. We make new friends and they adapt our culture. It is done in a very subtle manner but it is charming in its own way. There are some incidences that has prompted me to write about this aspect.

My oldest (word to be noted, in India and certain other continents we say 'eldest') sister lives in a small university town in southern Indiana. She has made friends with a lady who is from the mid-west. Theirs is a friendship which goes really deep, so deep that they consider each other as extended family, supporting and standing by each other through thick and thin, in happy times and in not-so-happy times too. The interaction between the two families is very great and very frequent.

My sister has two daughters. The younger one addresses the older one as 'didi' a word in Hindi which means older sister. My sister's friend also has two daughters and a son. When her son turned 3 years old, lo and behold he was addressing his sisters as 'didi' which he had picked from my niece and connected in his child's mind that he will call his sisters the same way. None of the adults taught him this and it came to them as a surprise.

My oldest niece was barely a year old when she started going to a day care. Her baby language skills were a mix of both English and Hindi words. She use to call milk 'du-dhoo'; this is a baby word derived from the Hindi word Dudh which means Milk. My sister explained to the lady in charge at the day care what the meaning is. My niece was not the only one using that word, but few other non-Indian kids started to use that word to refer to milk in no time.

My previous room-mate and I decided to keep a pet and decided on a cat. By the time an orange tabby was adopted one of my sister was living with us to and she came up with a name, "Jadu", that suited the cat. The name means magic in Hindi. I have since moved out but the room-mate still has the cat and still calls her Jadu. Oh, did I mention that she is from the Maritimes and is of Scottish descent. I meant the room-mate, not the cat.

One recent thing I organized at my place here in Toronto was a get together of my friends to celebrate the festival of colors - Holi. On 28th Feb I had few friends come over for lunch. These are friends who are from Canada, USA, Taiwan, Dominica, Singapore and China and of’ course, India. I wanted to share this festival with all of them. We had a scrumptious home cooked Indian lunch. And while we were enjoying the food the finals of Winter Olympics Hockey started in Vancouver. In the midst of enjoying our mango mousse and rice pudding we were cheering the Canadian team who were ahead of the Americans. I had some dry color powder to celebrate Holi. Coincidently, the color matched the color of Canada's flag - red. We gleefully applied colors on each others face and wished prosperity to each other. Few people left to head home in order to watch the closing ceremony in the evening. J actually came up with a brilliant idea; she cut out the shape of Maple Leaf on a paper and used that as a stencil to apply the flag on SA's forehead.

The rest of us continued with the match. We were united in our pitching for Canada whole-heartedly. Screaming with so much delight and fervor that it could bring the roof down, sigh in unison for a missed chance to score another goal by our strong team. The score was 2-1 when in the last 20 seconds of the game the Americans brought the game to a tie, they scored another goal. Needless to say our faces fell to the ground, we were disappointed. The tie breaker game went into another 20 min session. Our nerves were tight; we were literally sitting on the edge of our seats, figuratively too. The game had reached a nail biting crescendo. It was a do or die situation. And then our moment of victory came into realization, the gold was ours. Within the first 5 min Crosby scored the winning goal for Canada. We all screamed, jumped on our feet, I heard SA scream, "We won, we won," we hugged each other, and then we did a group hug. Our eyes were glistening with unshed tears of happiness and triumph. I must confess one rebellious drop rolled down from the corner of my right eye. It was amazing to go through this euphoria of victory. It was awesome to see how united we stood for the country. We rooted for it with our heart and soul. We stood as one in this pursuit, it was fascinating.

On one beautiful Sunday afternoon, a bunch of us came together under one roof, people who came from different parts of the world, representing all different races, learning a culture and cuisine to stand so united for a common cause for a country, Canada, where it is heart warming that this can actually happen.

Sometimes, I wonder why there is so much hostility and hatred in this world based on each others diversity. We have so much to learn from each other, so much to give to others; we don't even have enough time to do so in a lifetime. So why waste time in negativity?!! I truly believe that we live in a Global village, where each one of us is just there to contribute equally for its development and prosperity.