Skip to main content

Hospitality

Dictionary meaning

Hospitality -

1.the friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers.
2.the quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way.

Indians are believed to be one of the most hospitable people. It may be true to quite an extent, but there are some elements which seem strange. Say the obsession with eating, or to put it in some other way, guest eating well being a surrogate of a good, hospitable treatment. This may be more visible in interior or 'traditional' parts of country where ofter the person who is 'guest' is supposed to be 'following' or 'eating' thing served by the host. Plus there are some unwritten rules like you need to be always smiling, you need to get along well with everyone irrespective of age, believe with XYZ rules and all and blah blah. To hell with what you believe in, to hell with what you like or dislike, to hell with what you are as a person!

It all reminds me of one line i saw in a recent movie "Ghee khilaana aapke hobby hai kya!". (said by Katrina Kaif in a movie where she plays a Indian-Firang babe, said to her family members in Punjab) Recently I happened to go to a janmastmi celebrations where they had a prashaad in the end. They had some 12-15 varieties of sweets. All of them were 'served'. They were not ready to take it back (hospitality obviously!) and i couldn't leave it (good manners + prashaad combo!). Alas, I had to eat all of them and be in anorexic state of mind for next few hours! And I know not what people who are so-called 'health conscious' be thinking of when faced with similar situation!

We often tend to confuse hospitality with 'forcing to eat' so that the host doesn't feel 'bad' and all such stuff. So I wonder whom are we hospitable to !
Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous9:56 AM, October 30, 2007

    Lol!!!

    Long back, I wrote a similar post, after visiting a couple of relatives this summer! :)

    you may want to have a look at it here: http://worldthrumyeyes.wordpress.com/2007/08/20/indian-way-of-showing-affecion-eat-eat-eat-eat-eat-eat-eat-eat-eat-eat-and-eat/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nikesh Rathi10:54 AM, October 30, 2007

    Hey ... that made an interesting read!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Shop @ Amazon

Popular posts from this blog

An area of darkness ?

The title of this post finds its origins in a novel with simlar name written by VS Naipaul. Set in India, some 40 years ago or so, this is a kind of travelogue of author's brief stay in India where he found it to be full of superstitions, ignorance and darkness! Many decades and many MNCs and malls later, few parts of India seemed to have chucked off that tag, but there are many places that haven't and continue to remain shrouded in ignorance. Move few hours away from a city, travel in a second class train compartment or a dilapidated state transport bus and you get to see the dark underbelly of India Shining. As one of the characters in the movie Rang De Basanti says "Yahan zinda rehne ki jung mein logo ki zindagiyan nikal jaati hai" . So true it seems! My day today was spent being kind of lost in similar thoughts. To start with, I when I boarded the ST bus, a woman was wailing. She may be in her 20s or something, but she was crying in some peculiar musical tone. At
13 comments
Read more

The Forest

The Toyota Qualis and the Chvrolet Tavera stopped after a long journey. It was almost 9 in the night and it was pitch-dark. Night times in a forest are always pitch-dark. Adding to that it was a good `thirteen days since the last full moon day. Adding to this, the cloudy weather made visibility close to zero. Later in the night the forest would be engulfed in a fog making it nearly impossible to see. The only noise audible was that of silence, few random insects and that of a train going at a distance. After a long journey they all were quite weary and all they wanted was some rest so that the next day morning they can head for tiger and rhino spotting among many other species of flora and fauna in the wildlife sanctuary. Right now it was time for some parathas, maggi and booze. All fifteen of them headed for the cottage which they had booked, sat near the fire place relishing food, chit chatting about college life, universe and everything. But chit chatting wasn’t what they came
10 comments
Read more

Survival

Dark clouds were looming at the horizon. In few minutes they would have traveled few miles in westward direction and came closer. This is not usually the scene at noon in the hottest month of the year. Dark clouds meant something ominous. Probably sign of an impending storm or maybe a cyclone approaching. Sea is a capricious lady. Bay of Bengal was no different. It was infamous for cyclones, and Orissa was often at the receiving end of nature’s fury. Ramdas was few miles into the sea. So were his brethrens of the fishermen community. There were around a hundred boats in the sea that day. No one anticipated the storm. So no one even thought of staying back at the shore and miss out on their livelihood of the day. Ramdas was alone in his boat. He owned the boat. His son helped him with his job. They managed to get enough as to earn a square meal a day. They had a good rapport with others of fishing community. But of late that relationship was breaking down. No reasons for that. Nor wa
8 comments
Read more

One movie, Few observations, Many thoughts !

(Seems that this is becoming a movie review blog! But I couldn't resist posting about this!) ____ I saw Dead Poet's society(DPS) recently for the second time. First time I saw it, I loved it. Second time I saw it, I loved it more! One of the Bollywood movie Mohabbatein has its plot loosely inspired from it, although DPS is based upon topic of free will while the desi version is mostly a love story, with elements of free will, discipline, tradition etc. strewn in. DPS is about an unorthodox professor John Keating (played by Robin Williams) in a prep school, who arouses student's love in poetry, seize the day (carpe diem) and follow their heart. As expected the school authorities and few parents don't like it. Its last 10 minutes are excellent, probably one of my favorites! As one of the move tag lines puts it - " He was their inspiration. He made their lives extraordinary." Few random observations and many random thoughts - We often get so deep into things like
5 comments
Read more

Fan-o-phobia

Has there been some thing that you are worried about lately, something that might not seem too important that has been troubling you? ... Or that the very thought of it makes you shiver, tremble with fear or puts in the fear of god within you? Well ... I am facing one such thing of late. Somehow I have developed a fear of the fans, especially in cases where fans are a relatively lesser height, usually which I can touch easily with my palms or even elbows ... and even the ones that I can barely even touch by my fingers. This has not been without a reaon though. Recently I went to a relatives place where there was this combination of a fan being at lesser height and me being quite tall. After taking a bath (yeah ... I do take a bath ... in summers at least!) I switched on the fan, and raised my hands to wear a T-shirt. And suddenly I found something hitting my left thumb, hitting it really hard. Before the signal was sent to my brain so that I could realize what was happening, I put my h
5 comments
Read more