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The Sports Desk / Re: God help me - the Test Cricket thread
Last post by DJC -One needs to mediate carefully between the group and the individual. There may be a small element of truth to certain groups conforming to certain behaviors, but that needs to be measured against that fact we are individual minds, and you need to be wary of flattening or erasing any nuance or legitimate difference that exists between members of a group.
In terms of parental pushiness, my experiences were decidedly mixed, with 2 children involved in soccer, cricket, swimming, ballet, fencing, drama, choir, art classes, gymnastics. Pushy parents come in all shapes and skin colors, as do chill parents.
This is wise words.
That being said, our work has put on 2 'indian cultural days' where the goal is to help understand the differences between Indians and 'traditional' clients and how to navigate this without being offensive.
It was run by an indian woman who has been in Melbourne for almost 2 decades now.
Summarised best by explaining India is so big and varied its best thinking about it essentially as different countries. Wealth, education, language, religion, mannerisms all change depending on where you are.
However, take home message is this. As a general rule, "if you don't ask, you don't get" and "You can't say 'no' to indians" put a lot of people offside from our end. Culturally, they are 'pushy' because they need to be. There's a billion other people they are competing with. While as a group/company, we acknowledge this, but its poor form to bow down to such demands in comparison to any other client. Why should they get favouritism simply because they are pushy??
Obviously, within that individual personalities vary, just like other cultures, but they acknowledge themselves its part of theirs. This certainly does show up in sports and with pushy parents.
For those interested in movies, 'Dangal' is an indian movie based of real events of an overbearing parent going against tradition and training his daughters up to be world class wrestlers, competing at commonwealth and olympic games as a result. A great standalone movie in its own right, but gives you a look at 'the other side'.
Nice post Kruddler!
I haven't been to India but I hope to one day. A lot of what I know about India has been gleaned from cricket commentators like Harsha Bhogle on the wireless. They often stress how diverse India is with so many different religions, ethnic groups, languages, cuisines, cultural practices, etc, etc.
One of my former colleagues is from Nigeria but he obtained one of his degrees at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar. Some of his fellow students were Muslims and they couldn't get beef in Amritsar. Mba was travelling to a Muslim city and they asked him to bring some beef back with him on the bus. Unfortunately, one of the passengers noticed blood dripping from Mba's bag and he was confronted. He fessed up and was worried that he was about to be kicked off the bus in the middle of nowhere. However, all of the other passengers left the bus and he returned to Anritsar by himself.
