What Is Culture?
I’m opening this blog
post with a question. What is that elusive concept which is commonly known as
‘culture? Culture is way of life. How we live. What our values are. Our customs, attitudes and perceptions. And
also, I suppose, how we express ourselves in art through, such as music, dance,
theatre and cinema. It’s quite a
comprehensive area and not too easy to define, really.
The Journey
I was born in what is
commonly known as ‘the west’. I lived in Ireland for the first thirty years of
my life. When I was thirty, I married my husband and came out to India to live
here with him. That was the beginning of an interesting journey, which is still
evolving. I must have had some east/west comparison stereotypes in my head. But
in India, I found that the people I met had huge stereotypes in their heads
about what they called ‘western culture’ and ‘western way of life’. Not long
after I arrived in India, I was struck by the number of people who said things
to me like ‘in the …