The famous war photographer Robert Capa said, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” The same applies to observing a city. To this end, we invited several Taiwanese who have lived in India for a long time—a media worker, a student, a dancer, a Chinese language teacher, and a person working in an Indian enterprise—to share their views of India, based on their deep experience of daily life there.
Up-close observation
The year that Yu Chih Wei turned 22, having just graduated from university, she chose to come to India to work as an intern at a travel agency. Living in a village that flooded every time it rained and earning Rs16,000 a month, she decided to stick it out for the whole year and then to travel around for a while before going home. To raise money to travel, she went online to look for a job teaching Chinese. Little did she expect that the Hong Kong television station Phoenix TV would be in India recruiting “people who can speak Chinese on camera,” and quite by accident, everything magically came together and she became a TV reporter.
Wang Chieh-yu was one of the first group of Chinese language teachers sent to India by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, and she wanted to see how the country was different from Taiwan. After arriving there she had diarrhea for three months, but thinking about it later she was happy, because her weight had gotten back down to a level it hadn’t been since high school. She feels that “Incredible India” is the most fitting description she can find for the place.
Wanda Chiu, who originally studied fine arts, first came to India with the intention of studying Mehndi (henna tattoos), but due to happenstance she began to learn Kathak dance instead. Every day she practices yoga and dance and attends class, as she has done for more than seven years now.
Li Yi-ching formerly worked for an international exhibition company. On coming to India, at first she worked teaching Chinese for an agricultural NGO, then later transferred into the duty-free shop at Delhi Airport. The revelation that India has given her is, “Anything is possible, so why not give it a try?”
Cheng Hsin-wei came to India when she was 25 and worked in an NGO. After that job was over, she remained as a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University. The most important thing she has learned in India is, “You have to say whatever is on your mind.”
A lot of people admire these young women’s courage for having come by themselves to this diverse, complicated country, a land with a logic that often seems odd to foreigners. But as Yu Chih Wei explains: “It just so happened that when an opportunity to come to India presented itself, we were at a stage in our lives that made the decision easier than it might have been for others.”
Democratic and communicative
Soon after arriving in India you can feel that this is a place where conversation is valued, that Indians are people who can talk about anything. The drivers of the ubiquitous tricycle rickshaws are able to chat a bit when stopped at a red light, and you can always talk to the person next to you on the metro where you are packed in like sardines. For Indians, expounding your own opinion is “communicating,” and it is a very important matter.
Cheng Hsin-wei recalls that when she was first assigned to promote an NGO project in central India, her co-workers couldn’t speak English, and she couldn’t speak Hindi, making communication a big problem. From her silence her co-workers got the mistaken idea that she had something on her mind that she wasn’t willing to talk about, causing complications for everyone.
After getting to Jawaharlal Nehru University, Cheng witnessed even more how direct and unrestrained students are about talking, and how freely they express themselves. “In Taiwan we boast that we are very democratic, assuming that smooth elections are democracy, but in fact in daily life we are very undemocratic. For example, students don’t dare to contradict their teacher in class, and don’t dare to discuss things.”
There is another side to the coin, says Wang Chieh-yu. In India everyone insists on their right to express their opinions, but this emphasis on communication results in long-drawn-out decision-making processes, making Indian administration notoriously inefficient and slow-moving.
Attitudes toward this aspect are radically different in Taiwan and India. In Taiwan, when there is a difference of opinion, Taiwanese generally worry about upsetting harmony, and don’t dare to clearly express themselves. But in India, even after a ferocious argument, people can sweep away all bad feelings with a smile. Cheng Hsin-wei says: “Their way is better, because Taiwanese don’t say clearly what they mean, so everybody has to guess, which produces even more misunderstandings and makes the situation worse.”
Yu Chih Wei adds: “Saying what’s on your mind doesn’t mean you have to change the other person’s point of view. It’s all about understanding what the other person is really thinking.”
Expressing different opinions is a form of communication, and India inspires us to diverse discussion and speculation about communication.
Land of tolerance and flexibility
On the Indian metro you can often see eight people squeezed into a row of five seats. In India, interpersonal distance is extremely close, and mutual tolerance is extremely high.
Wanda Chiu, who came from Taiwan to India to study dance, lives under the same roof as her teacher, and in their daily life disputes and conflicts are unavoidable. “In Taiwan, if you have an argument with your teacher, after that the teacher’s attitude will change, and there will be an awkwardness between you. But Indians aren’t like that. They focus on the issue, not the person, and the day after you’ve argued everything is all right again.”
In specialized fields, Chiu has observed, Indians always maintain a proactive and encouraging mindset. “As a Taiwanese in India studying Kathak dance, their reactions have all been positive, and that intangibly lifts a person up.”
In this country where the gap between rich and poor is vast, there is necessarily a lot of misery in life. But they always get through it saying “All is well,” waiting with patient optimism for a chance to turn things around. In India there’s no point in trying to do things too fast. After six years of experience, Wang Chieh-yu has learned that things turn out best when handled slowly.
Besides not rushing things, the flexibility and the logic (which often dumbfounds foreigners) of India are amazing. If you want an Indian to willingly do a job that you have given him, the prerequisite is that you must first convince him, so that he has faith in you. Indians think about things a lot, and love to ask “Why?”
Behind this way of thinking, Yu Chih Wei relates a Hindi word, jugaad, which, depending on context, means something like “alternative solution.” That Indians don’t like to follow existing standard operating procedures is of course connected to the environment, because there is always something unpredictable coming up. When problems occur, Indians can always rapidly propose “Plan B” or “Plan C,” and there is nothing that has to be done in one certain way. These alternative solutions are often the product of flexible, out-of-the-box thinking, and they generally carry a thread of jocularity and humor. Yu Chih Wei cites an example from her book Go Make Your Way in India, Enter an Alternate Center of the World: When a shop owner has no coins to make change for you, he uses candy instead. This is part of India’s sense of humor, and one of India’s local “alternative solutions.”
Land of opportunity
India, the world’s second-largest country by population and seventh largest by land area (over 90 times the size of Taiwan), is also a land of opportunity.
Li Yi-ching says: “India has changed me. One thing it has taught me is that you have to give everything a try.”
After joining an Indian enterprise, Li discovered that the corporate atmosphere was markedly different from that of a Taiwanese company. In the workplace environment in Taiwan, there is no flexibility from standardized operating procedures. But in Indian firms, if an employee has a good idea, the company will normally be willing to give them a free hand and a chance to try it out.
“I’ve also learned something from the tuk-tuk drivers. If they name a fare ten or 20 rupees over the odds for a trip, and someone is willing to pay it, then they earn more, so why not give it a try?” Perhaps this is a negative lesson, but it very much illustrates the idea in Indian society that when you try there is hope.
Li is now preparing to start her own travel business. “India has given me self-confidence. Don’t think too much, don’t be afraid of failing, just let go and try. If you aren’t successful, so what? At least you tried.”
This kind of opportunity also came to Yu Chih Wei, who back then was a fresh face just entering the world of work. For a reporter in Taiwan to get overseas assignments takes at least ten to 15 years of seniority, but in coming to developing India, Yu was able to find an opportunity that she wasn’t really entitled to at that time. As a rapidly emerging country, India is just the kind of place that provides these kinds of opportunities to people who are willing to follow their dreams.
If you should take a journey to India, perhaps like me you will see India’s poverty, illiteracy, and public health problems. But you will get far more out of it in the way of non-material, spiritual thoughts and feelings.
Yu Chih Wei says that in India she has become a flexible, humorous person. She has found peace of mind, and a stage on which she can stretch herself. Yu, who was considered a little weird in Taiwan, found she was able to express herself freely in India.
Wang Chieh-yu offers this tip for living in India: you should always maintain a skeptical attitude, and see and verify things for yourself.
Li Yi-ching says that India has a magical power that enables you to discover different things of value in yourself.
Cheng Hsin-wei makes a point of practicing daily the art of courageously saying what is on her mind.
And with Wanda Chiu, there’s no need for words—seeing her dance postures, you can feel how confidently she lives in India.
