Indians & Adaptability in reverse

You must've have heard this. Even been proud of it. That we Indians are the most adaptable lot anywhere in the world. Sorry, mate, but I gotta break that bubble. We Indians don't adapt. Nah, not a bit. Instead we are adept at rewiring/reconfiguring a context that's new to us, so it adapts to us.

Its like the way we live abroad. Unlike what we believe there isn't too much of adaptation. Instead the foreign place we are in, gets turned into another mini India. Maybe not a mini-India, but surely a mini-Punjab (should I say Jalandher), or a mini-Andhra or something on those lines. You see that's our sub-culture exerting itself over our culture and over a foreign culture. After all, its embedded in too deep. Like I said, we are the least adaptable as people. And that shows in the way we live and behave, elsewhere to our domiciles.

Is this important? Sure it is, even from a consumption perspective. Our lack of adaptability requires that anyone trying their hand at selling to us must configure, according to our cultural psyches. Because we aren't going to adapt. And even if sellers don't, know what, we will do the reconfiguring ourselves. Like it happens with the spanking new roads laid down in India, the way its in the US.. Do what you want with the roads, put dividers and lanes, it doesn't matter. The lanes miraculously disappear once we are on them, the dividers get moved around so there's enough space for us to squeeze a turn right where we want it. We're not kind who want to go all the way to the end of the road so we can take an exit to get to the other side of the road.

Now, is our lack of adaptability here to stay forever? Of course not. But then don't ascribe any changes to a change in our psyches. Instead put it on the fact that the influencers bearing down on us have changed over time. And so a subsequent generation doesn't get wired the way we did. For example the kind of technology and media exposure that the next generation will be subject to, will be radically different from what we grew up in. And so their psyches will be different. They may take to lanes on roads. To standing in queues. To things we can't even dream of. Good or bad, I don't know. But I do know it'll be something I personally welcome. Because I've had enough of our cultural influence seeping into our behaviour. I'd rather go for one that's boringly universal. And safe and easy.

Maybe I won't see that change in my lifetime. But what the hell, the way I see it, we are on that road and getting there.

Cheers to that.