Perceptions of India

Notes from my interactions with students from 50+ countries at MIT

Photo by Tiago Rosado on Unsplash

I stepped out of India for the first time ever on 7th August 2019 to pursue an MBA program at MIT Sloan School of Management! Our MBA batch represents over 50 different countries and has over 40% international students and including other programs across the campus, I am certain we’d have more countries in the mix.

Over the past 2 weeks, I discovered some interesting perceptions that my fellow students here at MIT had developed about India. Hence, I decided to categorize and document them and see what I compile over time. Also, through this exercise I have an opportunity to reflect upon my own perceptions of what I expected people who are not from India to know about India!

Some important information that I want to share before we dive in!

1. These notes are qualitative in nature and hence a pattern that stands out to me as interesting might end up being over-represented. However, I’ll try my best to share these observations as fairly and accurately as possible.
2. For additional context, I’d specify some details on the background of the person with whom I had an interaction. The intent of any such details is only to paint a richer picture and NOT to generalize that people from a particular background have XYZ perceptions.

Geography

• Delhi, Mumbai & Bangalore: When I was asked where I was from I felt like I had to refer to Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore to paint a picture. I’d say I was born and raised in Mysore which is close to Bangalore, then I studied in Mumbai and worked in New Delhi. This would give a fair approximation to most people, even those who haven’t traveled to India.
• Varanasi: 3 different people who had traveled to Varanasi among other places like Delhi, Agra, Jaisalmer, Jaipur were deeply moved by Varanasi. What stood out to 2 of them (who were from Brazil) was how different our relationship with death was. (I’ll have more conversations with them to find out what specifically felt different and hopefully remember to update here)
• North-east: I felt that most people I spoke to weren’t aware of the North-Eastern states as a popular tourist destination.
• North vs South Distinction: I felt that a lot of people had distinct perceptions of North India (deserts, mountains) vs South India (coastal areas, plantations
• Mysore (my home town!): Some people knew Mysore because of it’s association with Yoga :D. Mysore is also a tourist attraction in Karnataka since it has a beautiful palace, a Chamundi temple that’s located on top of a hill, the Kukkarhalli lake among other attractions. The festival of Dussehra is celebrated with great pomp and show and the entire city is covered in beautiful decorations as a part of the festivities.

Photo of a gallery in the Mysore Palace by Manoj kumar kasirajan on Unsplash

Food

• Palak Paneer (Spinach with Cottage Cheese): A lot of people I talked to love it! I did not expect that at all because I felt like Indian restaurants in the US primarily promoted Chicken Tikka Masala and Biryani. (I am yet to resolve how I myself built this perception about Indian restaurants in the US :D)

Palak Paneer is fairly easy to prepare at home too!

• Spicy Food: Indian food is expected to be so spicy that you only experience the heat and not the flavours. I have not met anyone yet, who is in favour of hot spices! (I am guessing that Palak Paneer was preferred because it tends to be milder than Tikka Masala or Biryani.)
• Healthy, Vegetarian Option for winters: A few of my friends from the US also mentioned that they considered food from Indian restaurants to be a flavorful, healthy vegetarian option especially for the winters since it is served warm. Salads would be healthier but don’t feel as comforting through the winters.
• Meal = Collection of Dishes: During conversations, I’d share that one of my favorite Indian food would be what we eat during Diwali — Kachauris (fried Indian breads made from lentil flour), Mutter Paneer (peas with cottage cheese in a thick red gravy), Aloo Gobhi (sauteed potatoes and cauliflower) and Rice Kheer (rice pudding). A few people I met were surprised that I didn’t mention one single meal but a collection of dishes that we had in one meal. (However, I am uncertain if most Indians would say that their favorite food is a meal too :P )
• Underrepresented Diversity of Indian Cuisine: Most people did not realize how different our food can be from area to area. Perhaps it’s an opportunity that restaurants here can leverage!

Lifestyle & People

• Greetings: My Latin American friends here shared that greeting people was slightly confusing to them since they usually gave each other a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Whereas in the US a handshake was appropriate, and if you knew someone closely a hug was fine. When they asked me how we greet people in India, I realized that based on the context we had many different greetings. Among Hindu North Indian communities, it is customary to greet relatives and other elders by folding hands together in Namaste and maybe even touching their feet. However, it is also common to greet people with a handshake. And among peers, our generation never greeted each other with a Namaste! The handshake, the side-hug and the hug are all a part of our greetings too across different contexts. However, the perception that a Namaste is used all across India was interesting to spot.
• Daily Lifestyles: How Americanized (or perhaps Westernized) our lifestyles had become in the metro cities was unexpected for a lot of people I met too. I explained that my hypothesis was that this change in lifestyle stemmed from 3 factors: influx of global brands (stemming from neoliberal policies implemented in 1991), education and work away from home and family, western entertainment.
• How to differentiate people from different places in India: This was perhaps the most shocking conversation I had. A friend from Morocco who had lived in Singapore for 3 years mentioned that his Indian friends had shared that you can tell a North Indian apart from a South Indian based on skin colour. I was deeply disappointed that my fellow countrymen felt a need to share something of this nature. It’s worth pointing out that India has a product called ‘Fair & Lovely’ among many other Fairness creams. Such products seemed like a normal thing until I grew up and realized that it was not OK to have such products. Another friend from Lebanon mentioned that he had Ethiopian neighbors whose daughters used ‘Fair & Lovely’ too. But they believed that it helped in evening out the skin tone instead of actually making them fairer.

One of the many advertisements for Fair & Lovely — a women’s fairness cream

An advertisement for a Men’s Fairness cream — Fair & Handsome

• Names: The fact that our names have meanings was interesting to a lot of people. My name ‘Palash’ is actually the name of a tree with bright red flowers that bloom in the summer. When they cover up forests in some of the eastern states in India, the bright red color makes it looks like the forest is on fire. So the Palash flower is also called ‘Flame of the Forest’. This flower is also used to make color for the festival of colors, Holi.

The Palash Flower

Business & Industries

• Flipkart: Since I’ve been working at startups and most recently at Lybrate, I’d share that our venture was backed with Tiger Global. But it turns out that people haven’t heard much about Tiger Global in the US. Flipkart was familiar to them however — it is truly the poster boy of the Indian ecosystem
• Health Insurance: Low health insurance penetration in India and direct interactions with doctors involving out of pocket expenses along with unfortunate incidents of medical malpractice where extremely shocking to people who had lived in the US or in Europe.

Entertainment

• Bollywood: A student who was raised in Texas shared that she watched a lot of Bollywood movies which a store in their town used to rent out. Another student who was originally from Korea but had lived in Karachi for 10 years shared that she loved Bollywood too.
• Pokemon: At one of the brunches at my residence hall, 4 of us (1 person from Canada and 2 from China) were excited to find out that we all loved Pokemon! How my generation of kids from India got hooked onto Cheetos just to get Pokemon tazzos and cards definitely tickled the group! Basically, Cheetos started giving free Pokemon Tazzos in their packs and a lot of us started buying Cheetos instead of our favorite Chips just to collect Pokemon Tazzos.

Pokemon Tazzos that we got with Cheetos. They were almost like currency for kids!

• Stags at Indian Clubs: A friend who had lived in China and Europe but spent a few months in India shared she was surprised by the “human trafficking” of stags in clubs. (Stags are single males and a lot of Indian clubs do not allow them to enter unless they have a female along with them.) She and other females would have to go in with 1 male friend each first and then step out to accompany more male friends and help them get into the club.

I’ll keep sharing more (hopefully) as I come across more experiences! A powerful message that was shared with us during orientation week was that as international students we might feel pressured to paint a complete picture of our backgrounds, but it is definitely impossible for any one of us to be able to do so. So as we share and learn from each other it is important to keep in mind that we are only getting a peek into a reality that is extremely vibrant and dynamic!

I’d love to learn from stories that all of you’ve had! Please do share any feedback that you’d have too since it’d help me improve! So whatever’s brewing in your mind, just put it across as a comment, or drop me an email at palagr2993+mdm@gmail.com, or if you so desire — tweet to me at @palashagrawal29!