Keya Choudhury is a Berlin-based intercultural trainer: She helps individuals and organisations prepare to work in different cultural environments than their own. Taking some time off from her current assignment in Bangalore, Keya recently came to Delhi for a short holiday. Being highly energetic and proactive, sight-seeing and meeting friends proved not fulfilling enough, so she enrolled in a week-long intensive Hindi course with Language Must. In this refreshingly lively interview, Keya shares some of her experiences learning Hindi, living in India and navigating different cultures.

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Continue reading "Cultural Immersion: The Experience of a German Hindu "

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Lately Knowledge Must had the opportunity to interview the distinguished Swiss interculturalist Hans Durrer, author of articles and books, teacher and coach, theoretician as well as practitioner. His pioneering works on intercultural and visual communication offer a very innovative approach to the study of culture. One particular field of interest for him is photography. According to Durrer photographs are nothing else than shattered fragments of the broken mirror of reality, which force the viewer to reconstruct their meaning. Depending on the upbringing, interests, and also the mood of the viewer, the photographs’ meaning will be read very differently.

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Jesús from Madrid, Spain, is a true devotee of everything Chinese. When he, with the help of a government grant, finally went to experience life among the Chinese people in Taiwan, he got hooked to the culture and now plans to build his career there. From starting out as a language student to working for national radio and lecturing at universities, in the five years since he made the move he never regretted his decision. Not least due to the high demand of native language teachers in Taiwan his future looks very promising. The enthusiasm he expressed in our interview will be an inspiration for many.

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I have been two months in India already and I thought I have seen crazy things, chaotic traffic, and incredible scenes. I didn´t realize yet that I didn´t know anything about cricket. I noticed that they were broadcasting several matches on TV, but I didn´t pay any attention really. Suddenly a Cricket World Cup semi final was taking place in the north of India and everyone was just crazy about it. Two days before the event everyone was talking about it and asking me who did I support: India, for sure.

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When I first applied for an internship in India all I could think of was: chaos, dust, traffic jams, smells, and millions of poor people. That was my preconceived image of India. Much of what I had in mind was basically negative, but at the same time all the people I know that have been to India told me that India is an amazing country, that I will enjoy it a lot and that making an internship there will change my life. I did not understand that completely, but as I like my life to be uncertain, as I love not to know what is going to happen tomorrow and as I truly believe in CARPE DIEM: I thought I should just do it.

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In Delhi friends of the arts, music and entertainment have marked 16.10.2010 to celebrate an interplay of artistic diversity. At Max Mueller Bhavan (how the Goethe-Institut is known in India), followed by an after show party around the corner at Aqua (in The Park Hotel New Delhi), the Sound Tamasha family will release the first of its kind electronic music compilation of Indo European artist collaborations: Sound Tamasha – Spectaculicious House (Creative Commons Only).

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I recently read an article in the New York Times entitled “In India, Castes, Honor and Killings Intertwine”. Over the six years or so since I made my first journey to India, I have recounted to friends and acquaintances at home some of the anecdotes (I wince to use this word – as if abuse of women should ever be relegated to a mere anecdote) I have encountered in first, second, or third person regarding the ways in which women are abused, maimed, or sometimes killed, as in the case of the young girl in the aforementioned article. I always want to defend or make excuses for the country that I love. It’s true, there hasn’t been a case of sati [immolation of widows on their husband’s funeral pyre] in years (though I hasten to point out, there has been in my lifetime), but I recall reading of daily “kitchen fires” in the police blotter in the Bangalore newspaper years ago; and discovering that this was a twisted and polite allusion to an intentional act of violence often resulting in homicide, not an indication that the country needed to examine safety standards of stovetop ranges.

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As a result of stronger ties between Germany and India, cultural relations between the two countries have found new impetus drawn from a longer tradition of German-Indo cultural exchange. Foreign cultural policy experiences multiple incentives and support on both sides, which makes it useful to establish sustainable structures of cultural dialogue. However, a number of factors could be listed to shed light on the still asymmetrical nature that marks cultural relations between India and Germany. Among them are: different conceptions of foreign cultural policy, different stages of the respective art industry and cultural infrastructure, a historically determined imbalance of financial and infrastructural resources and the sheer ignorance in the way both countries have perceived the other.

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I used to be a passionate cyclist in Berlin – now I cycle in Delhi. People have told me that Delhi used to have separate lanes for cyclists. Back then when South Delhi was still a conglomeration of villages, cars were the more exceptional mode of transportation. Sometime back the space was taken over by cars and planning was taken over by those who thought a modern city needed wide streets for cars rather than lanes for its inhabitants to walk on, or ride on their bikes – often affectionately referred to by Germans as their “Drahtesel” (a ‘donkey made out of wire’ in German language).

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