The Fairytale Dreamland, Changed!

Friends, Neighbours, Frau P And Others

She - Frau P - came to teach us German, appointed by the multinational company that had brought us to Germany, as a part of the systematic looking after us; we were to be there for a year or two, and the system of the country was very different from other countries we had been until then. 

 U.S. leaves one alone as long as one is legitimately in the country and indulges in the legally permissible activities - of which the definition is far less stringent, to say the least - and one hardly ever feels like an outsider while living there. It is only that one has come from far away, but more often than not one is made to feel not only welcome but not separate. At least, it was so until the end of last millennium; and even then the last couple of times we visited it was only a tension of the young immigration officers with new equipment and new procedures that felt different. Once in immediately one was part of the nation. 

 But Germany is essentially different - it is not only that unlike U.S., which is built on immigrants from everywhere and feels kinship to the rest of the world, it is insular; but it is almost xenophobic for most practical purposes. It used to be not so, a quarter of a century ago. It was more friendly then perhaps, or at least there was a correctness of behaviour in officials and some more friendliness of people. Now, there is a resurgence of repressed things that need to go away, and while they have not it is difficult or often unpleasant.

 The fairytale dreamland I once visited and was desolate to leave was very different this time around. 

 A myriad of official details were required (registration of the address where we would live was only one of them) that were seamlessly taken care of by the MNC, so we were grateful for the help. A few details bothered, some got corrected and some did not. The tax form showed us as "of no religion" and I insisted we should be mentioned as Hindu, and not seem to hide it or lie about it; we were told it would create unnecessary problems, and there was no correcting that. I did not wish to be fractious and could only insist so much, they - the helpers who filled our forms - were polite but firm as if they were dealing with recalcitrant children. We gave up. I do know that that information was - to begin with - required for religion tax, and the religion one mentioned would get the amount, which went to (German) social works in case of those who "did not believe in religion". 

 Another detail that was deliberately botched (by the young man at the bank who filled the forms out for us) that got corrected was of occupation and qualification. I had given the position and title for the required answers and he wrote what seemed to be elementary, not the higher level, and when I insisted on him correcting it, he sulkily replied that it did not matter. I queried about that and when assured that the two were indeed different asked them in the bank to correct it. They botched it up again, between the two of us; I pointed that out, and finally they got it right. 

 It was in one of those many encounters that we were also told - "now you are in Germany you have to speak German" - which seemed slightly off; I wondered if they thought it was a matter of switching a push-button mechanism in the computer attached or swallowing a pill that would automatically produce the result or something, or was it colonial competition of masters over subjects, to switch languages as told. 

 I had come across this demand before and if anything far more fractiously, threateningly or with an air of absolute certainty of the right of those who did make such a demand. And that was within India, too. The state that assumes leadership of "south India" could so easily be a natural leader if only they would let qualities speak for them but no, they have to make it seem like a fight, probably because they wish it that way, and in the process harm the cause of their own language and culture by making it seem like subjugation to give in and learn or like them. Their neighbours sometimes emulate them in this and it does not help them either. 

 In any case speaking or acquiring enough expertise of a language is not a matter of switching from one practice to another by something as easy as pushing a button, unless one knows the language already. Changing food or clothes habits is not easy, but easier (than complying with the requirement to speak a particular language) sometimes, when it is not a matter of anything other than taste. Language is a complex structure and by insisting others speak yours right away you are reducing them to non-entities, infants at an advanced age, to be browbeaten by you ('no, the inflection is wrong; your mastery is not quite there, not yet") at your home turf. It is not the same as asserting your own rights to speak your own language, when you demand it of others as well, as a condition to dialogue. 

 Speaking your own language, retaining your own culture and cuisine and attire and so forth is important to every community equally. But right to speak your own language with your own people is not the same as imposing it on others and somewhere in between there are two important considerations - those of civility to others and that of communication, which is made easier with civility and difficult without. 

 In Germany it seems to be the younger generation, those that were supposed to have learned three major European languages (German, English, French) necessarily in school, that claimed often they could not speak English; those that had actually gone through the war and had really not learned English in school were often able to communicate in spite of it, and it seemed to be a matter of whether one wishes to communicate or make obstructions in the way of it. Often it was not possible to correct their attitude, or else one would be giving the same speeches and making the same argument over and over - at fairly major railway station ticket booths, for instance, where they must expect tourists. 

 If the country does not wish foreigners to enter - whether as tourists or as guest workers - they could have it arranged easily enough, but wishing the others to come for sake of improvement of German economy - via expertise of workers from elsewhere and tourism - and then making it as unpleasant as possible is uncivilised behaviour. As it is we were of those few who agreed to go when asked - most colleagues here were very surprised; and when Frau P was talking about how the country was flooded with immigrants, and had more immigrants than any other nation in the world or at least Europe, I asked her to look at some facts. (She said "but there are so many foreigners, they are everywhere" and I pointed out that she - they - feel that way because they are disturbed by this, while actually the proportion is minuscule.) 

 London streets and bus stops are where meaning of a truly cosmopolitan society are visible - one sees people of every sort, and no one is staring, unlike the German reaction to "other" people. German consulate in India where we went to get visa was very pleasantly empty, unlike the U.S. consulate where people queued up at four a.m. to be able to make it (these days it goes with prearranged appointments); and the numbers tell their own story, with quotas of one remaining unfilled and the other always huge backlogs. 

 The only way to substantiate their claim to having more immigrants than any other nation , whether in the world or in Europe, is by including those immigrants that are actually counted as those with right to German citizenship in the first place, by virtue of ancestry traced to Germans who emigrated to Russia or east Europe, returning due to being unwanted after all these centuries (not in a small measure due to the last war). 

 At the bank we were able to have a say about the whole issue - once I waited for a teller to pay attention while she attended to others, and she attended to yet others who came after me and I still waited patiently, and then she walked away having not seen me standing and waiting less than five feet away. I was exasperated and asked with a little louder tone if there was anyone working who might attend, and she came rushing back and apprehensively said she had not seen me. This made me angry - it was not possible to not see someone standing five feet away who is not part of the ambiance (worker, furniture) unless your vision is restricted to your own sort. She then tried to play to language card to obfuscate the issue by saying she couldn't understand English - again not true, English worked quite well ever after - and I was livid by this time and asked "why not? We come all the way from Asia, we learn a language so foreign to us, and you cannot learn one language, you want us to speak every language in Europe?" 

 Yet another person - this time the driving teacher we had to use due to the legal tangles of the country, though she taught me very little, and actually used me as a taxi service to do her errands while she got paid - said "we have tests in your language" and I was pretty surprised, and asked her which one; she said "English" and was unwilling to hear that it was not my or our language, not the first one anyway - "English is my fourth language" I repeated twice before she would consent to hear it without disturbance to avoid hearing fact of it. 

 And it seems to be a general confusion, helped majorly by all they are told officially, so they are actually unaware that we in India have not only a language of our own (with major literature in each one), we have well over twenty of those even officially, and with major history of and literature in most, and with over a dozen scripts as well amongst them. When informed of this they sort of condescendingly talk of dialects - "German has many dialects" is a common response - and one has to clear that with "so do most of our languages" before coming to the fact that in terms of variety of different languages and cuisines and so forth India is comparable to Europe rather than any single nation thereof, or even U.S. or China (which are mutually comparable in that matter) or such nations. 

 As for the driving instructor she made it into a ridiculous war - the last of it being when I fondly remarked on how I liked the view of the Hohenzollern castle when we drove on highway and the vista opened coming out of the tunnel, and she went "no, you cannot see it from here, I know this because I grew up in the town below the castle"! As I told the neighbour, I don't care if she grew up as a princess in the castle, when I see the castle I see it. 

 Frau P came regularly, twice a week, to teach us German. We were not quite proficient enough in it to hold adult dialogues but had a familiarity with it to different degrees, and often the lessons would digress into dialogues with her relating some part of her experience with living in Venezuela or asking us questions about our country and so forth. She was surprised at the pleasure we had answering her and must have been a little overwhelmed or felt a pull as one would looking out at sunlit meadows through a window of a dim castle, for she suddenly one day in the beginning informed us she had no wish to be converted. We had to laugh and informed her that was not anywhere near an agenda. Which is when she admitted to being attracted. That was probably the last time - thereafter she tried very hard to find some issue, some way of belittling or insulting or hitting hard, but usually it either rolled off or backfired. Her remaining civil was the handicap she had to deal with, for if she was rude she was unhappy about it, and yet dealing with the notion of a civilisation that sounded superior even at a distance, with fragments of description, was a huge problem, since it was a severe contradiction to everything they have been presented with. 

 Once the talk turned to music, and she was surprised to hear that we had a tradition of classical music that was very different from theirs. I fortunately had just bought equipment and was able to play a tape; she was overwhelmed by it. Later, she tried to undo it - lest I assume she liked anything - by saying anyone could sing like that. I did not argue the point. Another time she brought a description of a German musician team visiting India and learning from some teachers here, and visiting temples. The published description was belittling at the end where the overwhelming effect of India on the visitors was described as comparable to "the oil-and-mud mixture on the ground outside (THE) Kali temple in Calcutta sticking to their shoes" which they presumably needed to brush off. This was final, though not the worst, offence she had deliberately given. Worst was looking at a worshipped photo on the wall and disdainfully exclaiming "this looks ordinary to me, there is nothing special" at which I had easily replied "that is all right, if you don't see it; I see what is special". She had then turned around to accuse me of not helping others by teaching them! 

 There were other people we were interacting with, and some became friends of heart, though we met much less often and much less in total time. Of those few I have pleasant memories, too.

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 But of those I interacted with regularly, I suddenly began to suspect they were a network around us, not only keeping track of our life and activities but more - one, finding and sharing information about us, of even private (and unrelated to anything to do with them or for that matter with anyone other than us) nature; and two, making us spend money even beyond confirming to the local habits (which we could not always do either).

 

 One would push us to go for a fair in another city that would cost a packet for the journey, before shopping; another urged us to buy drinking water or a particular local brand of juice and so forth. Yet another would speak about how C&A is a cheap outlet - it is nothing of the sort, it is conservative clothes and middle range prices - so we could be encouraged to shop at boutiques (that is for those who are stupid and have too much money no one worked hard for, I opined; that was that on that issue); and so on it went. 

 The neighbour tried hard to get us to change our diet habits, by laughing when our being vegetarian was mentioned or when we invited some colleagues who were not Indian expat, and explicitly instructing "now that you are here you can get good meat so must eat it" and extending that to alcohol as well. They must have been frustrated about our - one of us explicitly, another not quite so explicitly but just as firmly - not falling in with the direction we were being steered. We were happy to adopt a few customs, such as conveniently buying some flower and other planted pots. It made life pleasant to have roses blooming besides the front door and hibiscuses on the window sills. It was another thing to confirm with most other suggestions, though. 

 The most bizarre of all suggestions was that from the next door neighbour informing us that we should leave our front door open during the day, and saying that this is what most people did in the neighbourhood (not true), with a ridiculing comment on how this place was "not New York". Well, even if it was the custom and even if it was safe - and neither might be true at that - we were not there to settle in that house, that neighbourhood, for good; and another place with those habits might be disastrous. So that urging me from the neighbour who had an extra key from the landlord anyway was a bit suspicious. No bolts anywhere in the house either, and we took to locking as much as possible - which only worked when one of us was around. 

 Eventually the network nature became obvious. A word spoken here would emerge as a repeated word in conversation with another and seemed more deliberate attempt to make us talk than casual and coincidental, and it happened often enough. I even came to suspect the network was not of a private gossip nature but was loosely officially arranged (by the country, not the MNC, I would think). We fell out with one of them, and we fell out of it with all of them at once, suspicious in itself. That is when other contacts, probably not of an info-network, became more of part of our life. This was shortly before we decided to leave. 

 One of those friends asked us, a week or two before we left, what we liked about being there. The swift answer was, being able to drive to Switzerland every weekend if we so wished. The unexpectedness of the question had brought out a swift answer that was true. 

 Those people too had had misinformation about various things Indian - for instance they had no notion that a funeral pyre was not just a callous way of disposal but involved ceremony and priests officiating for the soul of the departed just as at their own funerals involving burial, but we chose fire due to our understanding of and respect for fire as a purifying force of the Divine. They expressed surprise at that and I had to say that it was not their fault as much as of those in authority of various sort that are interested in keeping them uninformed or misled with disinformation. There had been many conversations with the now extinct contacts, far more unpleasant, so I was not surprised at the factor but was quite aware of it. It was not something we would miss. Driving into Swiss country, we still do. 

 There were other things too - pure juices of many more varieties available regularly at affordable prices (and Germans do drink juices), landscapes around - Black Forest on one side, and Schwabian Alb on the other with German (Bavarian) Alps beyond, and Swiss to the south, made any drive on weekends a pleasure (if one did not stop for a snack or drink), and bread and chocolate which are excellent in Germany with many varieties of the former and superior quality of latter. Gardens and swans and flowers - tulips, magnolia, daffodils, fruit trees blossoming along various roads, and the ease of buying potted plants with or without flowers. 

 The fairytale dreamland I once visited, and was then so very desolate to leave, was very different this time around. Perhaps the spirits have again come out - as they are played every winter, in a playacting mode from Halloween in October to Fasching in February - and perhaps it was the jailer of the beauty imprisoned in the castle that is back, and the beauty, the soul of Germany, is cowering, terrified again. Who knows? It is after all the land of all those tales, and such tales are not entirely lies, but only embroidered truths deep hidden in legends and fairy tales. 

 If only the xenophobia would disperse - but then perhaps it is deliberately kept so the power of various authorities is not jeopardised. Such are difficult to cure, though individuals are another story. For after all in each human with a soul resides the Divine and therefore all possibilities too - it is merely a matter of opening your eyes and choosing your way.

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