Sohel's Blog

2002-02-28T17:08:00.000-08:00

Its strange the things you have to adapt to in a foreign land. There is an engineer Bharat, who works in my group. Most of the Americans call him “bh-raaat” . I can understand that as I mispronounce some Amercian names too. I raised a point in a meeting today and referred to Bharat. No one had a clue who I was referring to. I knew why no one did as I pronounced his name as it is supposed too. After repeating a few times I had to give in and refer to him as bh-raaat. It was so weird.

and then people say I’m getting Americanized………

2002-02-24T08:19:00.000-08:00

Is there a such thing as an Indo-Pakistani culture? Or is it an Indian culture and an Pakistani culture with many similarities. This was a question posted by someone on a message board. My reply to that is below.

This an interesting question. But what we first need to have is a
common definition of culture. Before I go on I would like to say
that I am Indian and was born in India but what I say here is my
opinion and I do not speak for everybody.

Some of the definitionsof culture, which you would be familiar
with are
"The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts,
beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and
thought."

"These patterns, traits, and products considered as the
expression of a particular period, class, community, or
population: Edwardian culture; Japanese culture; the culture of
poverty.

These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a
particular category, such as a field, subject, or mode of
expression: religious culture in the Middle Ages; musical
culture; oral culture."

Some of the definitions from websters are
" the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior
that depends upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting
knowledge to succeeding generations b : the customary beliefs,
social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or
social group c : the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and
practices that characterizes a company or corporation"

We all know that India and Pakistan became independentin August
1947. So to answer your question in so many words I would say to
a certain extent we share a common culture but because culture
also (but not only) depends on religion, we do have our
differences.

The next question that would probably arise is what are those
differences. This is not so easy to answer. As we know
that "culture" in subtle ways is different across India but there
are similarities too. An example would be some of the festivals
(like diwali) that are celebrated across India. But one may say
that diwali is a Hindu festival. I am a muslim and I celebrate
Diwali.

So coming back to the question "is there an Indo-Pak culture".
Yes there is because we share the same roots. The next part of
your question being about the similarities, in my opinion yes we
do have many similarities.

Hopefully that answers part of your question.

Sohel
http://sohel44.tripod.com

2002-02-21T18:50:00.000-08:00

I was thinking to myself today why I was so happy. Sometimes your just happy and you cannot explain it to any sane reason and somtimes you can. This week I have been in training and its been a great opportunity to meet new people in different areas of Ford. So coming back to why I was so happy. It so happened that at lunch I met 4 Indians at the table. It was great just to talk to people from back home. We felt so connected. The funny thing is that 3 of the 4 had stayed in Pune for some part of their lives. We talked for about 45 minutes and I left the table feeling just happy and....nice.

I need to go back to India for a holiday soon.

2002-02-07T17:43:00.000-08:00

Today was a long day for me.Yesterday was one day I felt that I had caught up with all my work and today I'm already behind. But thats OK as its life I guess. I could work really late or I could go home. I chose to stay back a little longer but go home after that as sometimes you just have to let go. I would rather get things done but I have come to the realization that you have to let go and go home.

Working is so much more slow paced than grad school.