Cultural shock

One can expect a cultural shock when moving from one culture to another; however it appears to me that it is usual go through the shock when moving back to the native culture! You presume to find things as it were when you left. Nope, they have changed as much as you changed, if not more. When I moved back to Chennai after 5 years of absence, I was looking in awe: is this the same place?

First thing to strike me was the ubiquitous ads of ‘Use condoms to prevent AIDS’. The whole world knows that Indians are very productive and was advised to use condoms to prevent childbirth. But now what happened? It took me a long time to realize the type of change in the society. If there was so much money poured into these ad campaigns, then there should be an awful lot of ‘stuff’ happening out of marriage. I am aware that ‘If there is marriage without love, there will be love without marriage’ and with 90% of marriages being arranged, is this an expected change? Aren’t these ads loudly and unashamedly proclaiming the degeneration of the institution of marriage?

I heard an equally disturbing news from my sister. It is about her college mate. He fell in love with a gal and they went out together for quite some time, before she broke the news that broke his heart – she already has a boyfriend, who is on a trip to the US! I’ve heard similar stories in my own workplace. (I should agree though that flirting happen with guys too. It is just that I heard many incidents which involved gals as cheats). Striking point is the increased occurrence of such incidents. Over the period our value system has degenerated. Instead of learning good things from the western world, we keep learning the bad things!

There are of course pretty good things happening around. But they are not so much of a change to shock me!

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