COMMUNITY RHETORICS:
Writing in the Service-Learning "Contact Zone"
Ratul Narain April 26, 2003 Carolyn Ross PWR
Leap of Faith: Preparing for the Contact Zone
Last spring I visited my mother's family in India for about 2 weeks. I had been to India before, but the last time I went was about 7 years prior to this trip. Needless to say, my relatives were expecting me to be much older, more mature, and responsible. I happened to be in India on day of the Hindu festival of Color, called Holi. In this festival, Hindus take colored powder and colored water and throw it on each other to celebrate. In fact, I like to think of Holi as the biggest water fight in the world, since it is celebrated all over India and now, all over the world. I was familiar with Holi, since my aunt in America often threw Holi parties. However, those parties were on a much smaller and less intense scale than what I encountered in India. On the morning of Holi in India, my family went to my second cousin's house, where about thirty of my other relatives were already gathered. After having some polite conversation with uncles and aunts, my cousins called me out to play with them.
"They [my sister and I] have come from America, the oldest cousin explained to the others in Hindi, and so we really need to show them what Holi is!"
I wasn't sure what he meant by that, and at the time, I couldnt tell whether I should have smiled back at his grin. I was expecting to get wet that day but, before I knew it, my cousins had surrounded me with some thick colored syrup in their hands. Although, I tried to reach for a bucket of water to scare them off, they rubbed the syrup all over me and my sister. Unfortunately, for the next week and half, my body looked like a tie-dye shirt, since I could not wash the color out of my skin, no matter how hard I rubbed!
Although it was a really fun experience playing Holi with them, this encounter made me realize the amount of passion that people in India have for this festival--something which I did not expect. In India, they saw Holi very differently from the way that I saw it, and so our ways of celebrating it were different as well. This is similar to Mary Pratt example of Guaman Pomas New Chronicle in which different parties of the contact zone view the encounter very differently. Poma writes about the slaughter of his Native people upon their encounter with Europeans. Unfortunately, Pratt suggests that Phillip III would have dismissed Poma as a savage Native American and so Philip III did not respond to Poma's writing. In this particular case, Pratt points out that the language barrier prohibits one side 'from understanding the other, or more specifically, prohibits Phillip III from reading Poma's Spanish and Quechua text. Similarly, I was faced with a cultural barrier which prohibited me from understanding the traditions of my Indian relatives who I was already distanced from physically.
Although I was surprised when I saw the festival in India, at least I had known about and practiced this festival every year in America. I was not facing this festival without being prepared or without any background knowledge. In fact, I had heard some crazy stories about Holi celebration in India from my parents and relatives who had lived in India as children. Just as I was somewhat prepared for the shock of Holi, would King Phillip III have been as shocked to see, if he ever actually did see, Poma's manuscript if he had known about the conflict that Native Americans were facing? He could very well have but the shock would have been much less. Likewise, my familiarity with the festival prepared me to an extent for what I saw. This raises the issue of preparing for the contact zone. I was somewhat prepared for the experiences I would have in my trip in India. This however, does not at all mean that there were no surprises along the way. In fact, there were many events, Holi being one of them, where my experience was quite different from my expectations. Holi, however, was not the only instance where I experienced problems in the contact zone relating to my relatives in India.
Being the eldest first cousin within my mother's family, I had to respect certain customs towards my younger cousins and my younger cousins were to do the same towards me. One of these customs required that I try my best to spoil them with treats while they politely try to resist anything I offer them. My mother had given me four hundred rupees so that I could buy my cousin some ice cream, as a treat. On a hot day while our families were shopping, I snuck off with my cousin to go find an ice cream dealer. When we found one, I realized that I had no idea how to approach him or talk to him. He mumbled something to me, but I just turned to my seven year old cousin and gave him a confused look. My cousin then translated the dealer's words for me, keeping the translation in Hindi, but using simpler words. The vendor was simply suggesting a mango popsicle to suit the hot weather that day, but I could not understand him because his Hindi was Indian-Hindi while mine was American-Hindi. I could not even pay the ice cream dealer because I did not know if I pay him after I eat the ice cream, or before I eat it. I ended up giving the money to my little cousin (which is not what an elder cousin should do considering he politely refused the money) and after much convincing made my cousin order and pay for the ice cream with the money I had. It was quite embarrassing for me.
This story demonstrates that people of different communities have different ways of communicating. It was hard for me to understand why there was a difference between the Hindi in America and the Hindi in India, but there I was with this unexpected conflict in front of me. June Jordan describes this phenomenon in her attempt to define Black English. Although both Standard English and Black English use the same words, Black English is structured quite differently from Standard English. Each dialect is spoken by a different cultural group of people. Similarly, I was raised speaking American-Hindi; I used small words, uncomplicated sounds, and rarely gesticulated. In India however, communication was much more complex. People spoke with their whole body, often pointing with their chin, and using complex sentence structures.
The style of communication is a very important aspect of language, and it was something that I did not take into account in my trip to India. However, I had been at least somewhat prepared for the language barrier when facing this different culture. Jordan's codification of Black English into rules is a way to learn this style of Black English and understand it. Similarly, my parents had raised me to speak Hindi, although they overlooked the customs and gestures involved with building a relationship with someone in India. Still, I had the resources available to me to better plan for the encounter and I am sure that I was better off than some of my cousins from America who have trouble speaking Hindi. If I wasn't able to speak Hindi, then I am sure that my experience in this contact zone would have been much different and much more intense.
Growing up in a country other than India, I realize that I will never be able to have the same culture as people who grew up in India. In Mississippi Masala, we see Indians, living in America, who have trouble retaining their culture. In the prayer scene, the fire is passed to Anil, who does not know what to do with it. He simply imitates the others around him and rubs his hair. This is how I feel that I have picked up a lot of my Indian culture -- by observing others. I don't remember ever being properly taught what to do at a prayer session, at a Hindu wedding, at Holi or any other cultural occasion. The consequences of this are that I may be practicing the traditions incorrectly. In that same scene, the priest is saying a prayer, but looks at Mina's confused face and then translates his verses into English so that she can understand. Here we see that the culture, in essence, is being translated into another language. When this happens, there is a good chance that many meanings of words, or aspects of culture will not transfer over. This became evident when Mina did not share the same cultural values as her family in Mississippi and so she ended up leaving them.
My trip to India, as well as Pratt's and Jordan's examples contact zone's suggest that one can prepare for an encounter with the contact zone. I had studied Hindi and had played Holi while in America, which should have prepared me for what I saw. However, even with any amount of preparation, there is always the chance that some new aspect of the other culture comes into play and surprises you. This was the case for me in India when I played Holi with my cousins and when I tried to interact with my younger cousin and the ice cream dealer. Still, preparing for the contact zone whenever possible allows for a better understanding between the groups coming in contact and facilitates the communication conflict between the two different groups.