The Indian Culture

As part of one of the courses during my fashion designing course, The Social Responsibility, I was asked to write about the culture around me in context of my family, hierarchy and individuality. It feels strangely exciting to write my first blog expressing my own thoughts yet it somehow feels liberating. I guess, ironically, it has been part of my culture to not be very expressive of my own thoughts out in public. But let me give it a try.

                                            

Culture for me is something you are born and brought up in. The set of norms, rules, customs, environment around you define your culture. Your family is a large part of what you grow up in in India because your parents are your first and primary teachers. As children, you learn what they talk and do. You see your parents and grandparents live in a certain set of rules in your house. You see how rest of your family members interact with your extended family (and yes there was a huge extended family around me in my childhood) at times of get togethers, family functions and festivals. That for you define your culture. Culture includes everything from how you talk to people around you, to your language, social habits, food you like, music you listen, art you follow. I like to believe that everyone absorbs different aspects of the culture into their life. For example, if a certain kind of music was being listened to in your family, it does not necessarily imply you will grow to like that form of music. But you will definitely grow around that form of music. It will be a large part of who you become eventually.

                                         

For me, personally, culture has told me that the wife/mother is supposed to take care of the house and household. I have seen my mother sacrifice a lot for the family and she has happily done it over the years. It is, as if, she considers it her job to keep the family happy from day to day forgetting about her own individuality at times. It is same as the job of the father is to keep the family fed by earning an income. I may have not understood much of it at that time and may not follow it in the time to come but it has been a large part of what I am today. I understand that individuals have certain roles in the family and that is how the family keeps on running. This is all my culture for me.

I have seen my extended family getting together in good and bad times. That taught me to always value other people to share your sorrows and happiness. Celebrating festivals in a certain manner, following certain customs and traditions, respecting elders, taking their blessings are some aspects of my culture I have grown around and imbibed. I have full intentions of passing on most of the aspects I have learnt from my family to future generations.

Traditions change as we go down the hierarchy because different people absorb things differently and have their own meanings of things they see and feel around them. I like to believe that change is not necessarily bad. It is for the better most of the times. Although change and culture do not literally go together but change is a big part of culture flowing from one generation to another. Change leads to evolution.

In last 5 years, I have been fortunate to be part of whole another family, my in-laws. This huge change taught me much more about culture than my 20-25 years of life before that did. Moving from one cultural setup to another, taught me about the diversity we have in this country. Even though the two families have same religion and caste, we still have different cultures, different customs, different ways of celebrating festivals, different values. Adjusting to the new family taught me to have my own individuality and values. I took the best from both the families (at least what I though was best) to create a set of culture and values I would want to pass on to future generations.

I would like to encourage each one to think about what is culture for you in the context of your family. Even writing my own thoughts here in this blog has taught me more. I have discovered and written things which I never explicitly talked about before. May it help you discover too!