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Here's a thread that was opened on one of the discussion boards I frequent at.
The topic was named 'Funny Neighbors'
For some reason, my intuition stuck me that this was going to be about Indian neighbors before I opened the thread. I once met a psychic at a fair who tried to lure me into getting my psychic reading and I refused. "You are like me hon" she said. "Intuitive". I kind of believe her. I think I have a very strong intuition.

On to topic again - The funny neighbors were indeed Indian.

The lady opened the discussion with something like -

Lady 1 - "Ok first I in NO WAY want to offend anyone, nor am I criticizing. This is just an observation. I have an Indian family who lives next door to me. I have noticed that at mealtimes the mother chases the small boy (about 3-4) around their patio with a plate of food, poking bites in his mouth. This puzzles me so much. Why not sit the child down at the table and let him eat? "

The first reply was something like

Lady 2 - Must not like what mom is making for dinner... LOL!!!

And then someone else chimed in with something like

Lady 3- I would guess that he doesn't like what they eat. I know we had an Indian neighbor once and the food stunk to high heaven. You could always tell when she was home and having dinner.

And the last reply to the thread was a somewhat kind one.

Lady 4 -That must be comical to watch! Lol! I actually love Indian food. But, I've only tried a few things. Who knows what she's poking in his mouth that he doesn't enjoy. :)

End of conversation - or so I thought since I didn't follow the thread anymore. Instead I started my usual ponder of the shocking culture differences people have.

When I first watched 'Titanic' I was kind of upset to see Jack and Rose sneak out and make love. To me love had nothing to do with sex. It bothered me to no end that Rose would sleep with Jack when she was engaged to someone else and then it bothered me further more when she moves on with her life and has kids and grand kids after Jack dies. That was because I was young and naive and did not completely evolve as the person I was destined to be. I was brought up in a society where Brides and Grooms met in a formal setting and decided to get married after one single meeting though I was too scared to follow the same route and made the choice of a partner myself. Pre-marital relationships were a sin to me. I would not in my wildest of dreams accept being in a pre-marital relationship as understandable. I watched Titanic as a young bride. Two things were alien to me - my own personality that was kind of under-developed and hazy and a foreign country where public displays of affection were as commonly spotted as people on the road. I loathed western culture. The loathe grew along with my familiarity to a completely new culture till I met my neighbor V who is quiet older to me. I found a true friend in V though we were from cultures as different as day and night. She dated numerous men before she found her true love. She and I shared only one thing in common - our gender. All else was different. We were from different generations, races, countries, cultures and backgrounds. But that did not stop me or her form being each other's best friend. She would drop her jaw to the floor to learn that me and my hubby were virgins before marriage and I would drop mine when she shared with me her numerous escapades with prospective partners. I slowly started to accept that being in pre-marital relationships is not as bad as I thought it was - though I would not have been caught dead in one and she realised that being in an arranged sort of marriage is not as bad as she thought either though she would not personally consider it in a million years. Now, I had come a long enough way to watch and actually enjoy watching "Sex and the City" without being judgemental about the four ladies and their quest for a completely compatible relationship - love, sex and everything in between.

Back to where the ponder began - to the 'Funny Neighbors' thread - Isn't it really funny that Indians as a culture are grown up on a healthy diet of mythological tales where Yahsoda, the mom of Krishna carries him on her hip and feeds him butter from her hand as she takes him out into the front yard and shows him the Full moon?? We just don't seem to understand that it is okay to let the kid eat by himself or herself. I actually thought that it was funny how westerners leave babies in their nurseries with a baby monitor on. "How cruel" I used to think and still think - not even "How funny" which looks pretty mild in comparison to "How cruel"
When my pediatrician asked me hiding his cynical smile if we co-sleep - I replied rather proudly that we do. It is one of the many things that we are taught to do differently by our culture and co-sleeping is not as bad as he thinks it is. Just like pre-marital sex might actually not as bad as I think it is.

The innocent ladies attributing the "poking of spoon" in a toddler's mouth as the toddler not liking the mother's food is nothing but lack of a perception, a lack that I thankfully un-lacked as I grew up understanding and respecting different cultures. When my third grade social studies teacher told us that coconut oil is used for cooking in Kerala - the whole class did a mock-mass-puke in chorus. An oil that is used to apply to the hair being ingested was a thought to invoke barfing. Now I see Chinese people frying snakes and centipedes and ingesting them when I watch the travel channel but I am courteous enough not to barf out loud. I think it is really not as bad as I think it is if it is looked at from the other person's perspective. Food is food is food. Right? and there is a paradigm shift in all things. Our holy cow ends up on a million American dinner plates - is it cruel? No. We spank our kids - is it barbaric? No!

My father's cousin once told me that we all need to travel. "That is the only way we can understand different cultures" he opined. I was a teenager. I did not know what the big deal about understanding cultures is - now I do or so I think!

I think the greatest thing a person could learn is to learn to understand that there is a vast world beyond our comfort territory and what is right to us might not or should not be right to everyone else.

I actually like the concept of making a child sit at one place and eat. Aarti does it once in a while but for a good number of times I let her walk the expanse of the house while I sub-consciously enact the "Yashoda" episode and feed her my delicious food. Now, if an American neighbor looks at it and thinks that it is because I don't cook well, I should probably shrug it off and go being who I am and at the same time realise that I should let her be who she is.

I think the whole world has an attitude problem - and a perception problem. And by the way - I do not judge Jack Dawson and Rose Dewitt Bukater for what they did any more. I actually have come to appreciate the concept of two souls uniting at a mortal level when love prevails.
That being said, I am thankful that I seem to have come over both my attitude and perception problems:-)