5 weird questions we always get

During our stay in India there are a great amount of things that have shocked us, since the culture and way of living is so different than our country. For them our culture is also a big unknown, and we have seen it in these 5 questions we’re recurrently asked:

 

1. What is your staple food?

Indian diet is mainly based on rice. You get rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Always. Every day. So for them it’s a huge shock that our Mediterranean diet doesn’t have a main dish that defines it.

 

2. Do you like Barca?

Although cricket is the most popular sport in India, a lot of people follow international football, and FC Barcelona is known everywhere. The funny thing, though, is that they pronounce it like Barca, instead of Barça.

 

3. OH! Spain! You have tomatina festival?

Almost everyone we met had watched the famous Bollywood movie ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’, which is about three young men who travel to Spain for a bachelor party and there, they go to the tomatina festival. Maybe they can relate it to the Holi festival, where they throw coloured powder instead of tomatoes. We have to explain that tomatina is typical from a certain region of Spain other that ours.

 

4. Do you go to bull fights?

They know about this because in South India there’s a common tradition similar to bull fighting. Although bull fights are still popular in some parts of Spain, in Catalonia, where we live, this kind of entertainment has been prohibited because of animal rights.

 

5. Who lives in your house? (Tumar ghorot kunase in Assamese)

They don’t hesitate to ask you about your personal life. And one of the questions that is more interesting to them is who do you live with, who are the members of your family? To us it was quite a shock because you only learn about somebody’s siblings once you know them well and not almost as an introductory statement. However, Indian society is based around family.