The hills are alive with the sound of culture shock…

[ornoth]

Went out to Rangoli—one of the better Indian restaurants in town—last night with a friend. We were their first customers of the evening, and after our meal we were still the only customers in the place. Before we left, I happened to pull out the mail I’d picked up on my way out of the house.

As usual, my mail had been secured with an elastic band. I discarded most of the pile and looked into something particular. When I looked up, my friend, a trained classical pianist, was having fun twanging away at the rubber band, trying to match the pitch of the restaurant’s background music.

With a huge smile of accomplishment she looked up at me, the only other non-Indian in the room, made a show of atonally twanging the rubber band a few more times, and loudly proclaimed, in complete seriousness, “Look! I can play Indian music!”

All I can say is I’m glad we’d already paid and were about to leave!

Comments

[angelovernh.livejournal.com]

You might be a bit too sensitive about that. If you were the only customers it's not like you were scaring people away.

[ornoth.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I was hoping the point would be more readily apparent. Let me try being a bit more explicit...

Here she was, alone in an Indian restaurant, loudly saying that her atonal rubber band twanging was comparable in quality to the best classical Indian music. Total "ugly American" move. You can't get much more culturally insensitive than that... It'd be like a Japanese tourist randomly arranging children's blocks and saying she was Emily Dickinson or something; I'm at a loss to come up with an adequate counterexample.

[angelovernh.livejournal.com]

i understand the situation better now.