Experience India

This past weekend I went to the Experience India event hosted by SAICA.  The event consisted of a tradition Indian dinner, choreographed dances, a hilarious skit preformed by all the members, and an dance party in which the members taught the attendees typical Indian dance moves. Through that night, I was able to laugh while I was expanding my cultural awareness.

I never had much of interest in India until this past year when I found out some of my friends were going for the summer.  With this new connection to India, I gained an interest in learning more about the culture and country of India.  Earlier this semester, my group and I researched Indian humor for our world humor project; however, I wasn’t able to get a real feel for Indian humor until I saw it first hand.  The humor portion of Experience India consisted of a skit that was based on the popular TV show, Friends.  This skit was preformed Bollywood style with dances intermixed in the acting.  The skit revolved around an Indian couple that wanted to get married; however, the young girl wasn’t able to get married until her older sister found a husband.  Apparently, the typical Bollywood movie is centered on love.  It is interesting how they took a cross cultural topic of love and fused it with Indian culture, the younger sister couldn’t get married until her older sister was wed.  The main humor was represented through the characters and the different relationships they all shared.  For example, the older sister represented the epitome a clueless girl trying to find love.  For one of her first dates, she did a background check on the guy and brought a list of topics to discuss if conversation started to wane.  In the end, the older sister found love, the fighting couple made up, the younger sister got married, and they all joyously danced off.

It was interesting to see the mixture of an American show with an Indian flair.  Within the skit, there were references to certain Indian ideas and beliefs, but the majority of the skit represented a typical American romantic comedy.  Many of the jokes were in response to awkward situations as well as stereotypes of men and women.  In all, the whole night increased my knowledge of Indian humor and culture. I felt that I was able to more fully immerse myself in the culture than simply researching it, and I had tons of fun along the way!