By Amisha Desai
I was feeling bittersweet, leaving the known and walking towards the unknown. I was saying goodbye to everything and everyone that was dear to me. It was the evening I was taking a flight from Mumbai to New York. Unlike the U.S., most of us in India live in the same apartment complex for most of our lives, and thus, many of our neighbors become part of our extended family. While waiting for the taxi to arrive, I was overwhelmed to see a crowd of people, some of whom I considered family but others who were just acquaintances, gathering in the main hallway to say goodbye and shower me with their good wishes and blessings.
On a different day, many years later, I frantically raced to the lawn of my house as I saw my father-in-law being carried into an ambulance. Although I was shocked, I did not fail to register that many of our neighbors were all standing on their lawns observing the whole process. In the next few days, I began processing the incident and wondered why none of the neighbors approached us to check on us or offer help. Was it because we were Asian Indians and somehow different from them, or was it that we had newly moved into the area, and they did not know us? I thought of my life experiences in India and imagined how this situation would have been handled back in India and why I was feeling so sad based on the behavior of others that I hardly knew.
The Oxford Dictionary describes the term “culture shock” as ‘the feeling of disorientation experienced by someone who is suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life, or set of attitudes. It is apparent that I was experiencing culture shock when my father-in-law was hospitalized because I had come from a culture that values collectivism, while in the U.S., it is important to allow people to have their space. What was interesting about the incident was that my preconceived notion that one experiences a culture shock in one’s initial years as an immigrant was shattered. That day, I once again felt the loss and warmth of people that I had been used to in India, and thus, I realized that a culture shock is an ongoing feeling in which assimilation may only reduce the symptoms instead of an outright riddance.
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