I Fist Bumped An Undergraduate Student
He is (if I’m guessing right) a sixtyish-years-old history major.
By Naisargi Mehta
I work at a coffee shop. During my shift, I regularly get this one customer. Every shop has that one person, right? One day, I cross paths with him outside of my shift. If I were in India (my home), I would just politely nod, smile, and keep walking. But this is not India. This is the U.S. and specifically, Minnesota. People are famous for being nice! So I stop for a moment to chat with this customer. My best guess would be that he is a professor based on his looks: two huge binders and a laptop, with a bunch of printed documents and handwritten notes.
As it turns out, he is a senior history major, soon to graduate from the University of Minnesota. He is preparing for his midterm. (Don’t we all share that pain?) We talk about our countries; I tell him a little bit about India, and he tells me a little bit about Minnesota. We suggest a book to each other, making it a very pleasant and mutually enriching conversation. At the end of our small chat session, we fist bump, and I leave with an added skip in my step.
Back in India, a conversation with an elder person would be pleasant, for sure, and even enriching at times. The end, however, would be a little different. Almost as if I were on autopilot, I would bow down and touch their feet. A gesture of respect in India. I would exit that conversation with a mental sigh of relief for not doing or saying anything “wrong”.
In Indian culture, there is a pre-established sense of respect for anyone that belongs to a generation older than that of yours, which automatically sets expectations from the younger generation. These sets of expectations are dependent predominantly on the elder generation because they are—by default—more deserving of respect, and hence they make the rules. This goes back to ancient India, where the older generation was literally in power because the oldest man in the family was the king. To this day, India is, at its core, a society where its occupants do as they are told. I know that “obedient” is not exactly how some people would label Indians as, but if you look at the whole community of India, we are generally extremely conscious about our actions around elders.
This system has kept hundreds of towns in order for years. But there’s this one minuscule problem I see: the loss of personal identity. I cannot help but ask: Who am I? What do I do? I am a good person according to all of my elders whom I respect. I do what makes them happy; I do what gets me their approval. A significant portion of our lives follows this pattern and set-up-expectations. Recently, however, there has been a gradual rise in the concept of forming one’s own identity in India. We persist with this developing this sense of agency despite those slightly-annoyed voices in the background accusing, “You always do what you want to do!” My reply: Well, yes I do, very much so.
Our efforts towards forming our own individual identities are often regarded as the “western influence” by some respected elders of our country. I did not know what this “influence” was all about, so I flew out to the west. What I am realizing here is that it is not the addition of some new influence. It is the eviction of a semi-toxic cultural influence. There are no expectations for me here, which gives me the freedom to form my own expectations for myself, struggle with the stress of not living up to them, and most importantly, fist-bump this struggle. I can own up to my struggle, my choices, no matter how stupid they may be.
The United States of America is a free nation. And technically, so is India. India is a well-knit community of people who like to poke each other more often than not. It’s mostly playful, but when it gets out of hand—we don’t talk about that. The U.S. is a community of people who generally like to mind their own business. If, for some reason you have to make a choice, choose wisely.