❤ Sagapo Ellada ❤

An article on how my master study life transpired to make me love the Greek culture. Title translates as “Love you Greece”

Some people find it difficult to associate themselves with a culture, How lucky am I to feel that I can solace in two of the richest cultures in the world as we know it— Indian and Greek.

It was September 2012, when I first came to the Netherlands as an international student, a completely different world for me, as compared to my daily experiences in India. Little did I expect that in this sky of unrevealed world I could find a star as bright as Sirius called Greece (Ellada). Culturally I have never been very curious, simply due to the fact that I come from a land rife with diversity, it does not surprise me at all. India showcases great diversity. With every province, it is totally natural to expect a different language, cuisine and landscape. What still unites people together in India as per my view is the approach and morality values. No matter which province I am in, I am treated with the same affection and sentiment even by the people whom I have no acquaintance with. Things got tricky for me when I moved 4500 miles away from my home country to The Netherlands. There were new experiences to my cultural lexicon — I had to develop a taste for milk and bread for lunches, a cup of coffee at restaurants was more than taste, it meant interesting conversations on diversity and world issues. A cup of coffee after dinner was new to me. It’s hard for me to disagree that this new dutch way of living was very intriguing however, there was always a void left in me by the stark different stands on certain hues of the cultural differences between India and The Netherlands. For instance, Dutch society has a culture of making appointments even for going to dinner with friends, showing up at someone’s place unannounced is no less than a crime, being formal all the time is expected amongst friends as well. The list can go on for some more lines, but I think the point to be made is clear. On an average, the dutch culture is too organised to be affectionate as per my standards.

If someone is too perfect they won’t look good. Imperfection is important.

- Eric Cantona

Theists may say that things do not happen but are made to happen by divine interventions. Some others will say that it is a matter of plain and simple luck. Whatever it was at least it provided me a means to motivation, a fire which I could kindle, a passion to live by and explore a great culture. This incident was what made the difference. I had a neighbour from Greece. Though I was surrounded by people from Italy, South Korea, Romania, China and Greece in my student housing, it was maybe the personalities that clicked and I struck up great friendship with this girl. She was different, affable, funny, and she invited me for conversation to her place — remember that in Netherlands being invited by locals to their place is equivalent to winning the Grammy’s for new entrants to the industry. Initially we had the ritualistic questions on which country I am from ? which part of India ? my mother tongue ? kind of food I eat ? how did I like NL , the common abusive words we exchanges like BC, MC, Mal***, kolo******, etc etc. Conversation went on and I was very impressed by how much she knew about India (courtesy her Indian friends) and the way she talked to me — like we know each other since time immemorial. Slowly over time we had more drink sessions, smoking sessions, corridor conversations and we developed into very good friends. Though she graduated one year before me and we lost contact for a while since she left NL, this experience had a lasting impression on me. Rest assured that though I have been sown in with seeds of greek culture inside of me, there is still the irrigation part was missing.

Being in an international university I could not stay away from the greek culture due to the large number of students from Greece in my neighbourhood. Every now and then I would hear words like “Malakiyaa” or “Etsi” and I would just eavesdrop on them to hear the conversation. I liked the sound of high and low notes (if I may say so) with which greeks will have a conversation. For some unknown reason this was music to my ears. Interestingly, I also noticed that Indians would get along really well with the greeks and my curiosity level just topped up a whole new level every time I saw this at weekend parties, pub crawls and social gatherings. The turning point in my tryst with Greek culture was my study course called process control. I had a greek professor and I could immediately make out the approach and style of this professor. The laid back and chilled out approach (I hope he never finds out that I wrote this xaxa) was what I could connect to. The robotic approach (as I would call it) from other professors was much more effective and timeline based but certainly not to my liking.

I decided to pursue my Master thesis with this professor. So I had a talk with him and he was very supportive of ideas , gave me different projects he wanted me to work on. Over the course of time I grew more fond of his way of managing my master thesis, not pushing me too hard but just pushing me enough to keep motivation alive. As he was a professor in a greek university as well, I had the chance to work with greeks who came on erasmus studies. The more greeks I met, the more I could connect with them. It felt like I was introduced to a whole new world of Narnia, a place where people who have absolutely no connection to my culture share the same thoughtwork as me. We were birds of different feathers but flocking together. A dear friend whom I would say is one of the personalities you would love to have by your side started teaching me greek language. Initially it did start with abusive words , as she sometimes refers to it as “useless greek”. Another friend who was never less than an elder brother taught me the “dude version” of the language which mostly consisted of pick up lines and the rest of the malakiyaas. Another friend, treated me like I am a special person in the world, little did she know how much her kindness meant to me. Another girl was a super cool persona (I would call her alani), times spent with her and Jack Daniels we may never be able to remember but something which we cannot forget. With these interactions, I was getting a hang on the language as well. I could say Cheers (giamas), I knew what to say when someone is drunk as hell. Believe it or not I also started learning weird songs like “Feta kai Psomi” from So Tiri (given below). How crazy can it get!!

I knew now the awesome idioms and expressions in greek and for some unknown reason . Another surprising observation was that words like sas, pachas, kali, mali, etc were the same in greek and hindi with only different meanings. This made it easier for me to remember the words. Moreover, I had a greek accent when I spoke as per my friends (how cool could that be for me!!! yay!). All these factors added to the sentiment. With every day I fell more in love with the culture, the people and the language of greece.

Being a researcher, my mind is trained to find a reason or atleast try to find one and make connections with what I think and observe. Though this social topic is not my area of research yet it provided me a good topic to think about. I planned to go to Greece to find out for myself if this is really the case that people are similar to indians or it is only the greeks who travel abroad.

A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.

- M K Gandhi

In Dec 2014, I took the journey from Netherlands to Greece. I stayed over a course of 3 weeks with different families, parents of my friends most of whom I had never met in my life. Though some of them did not even speak English and my greek is as much as chicken feed, language was never a barrier. From the first minute I stepped at my friends’ place in North Greece , close to Thessaloniki, I felt like I was visiting my family and meeting them after a long time.

The food was amazing, very traditional, collection of framed pictures of my friend’s childhood just like my grandmother used to have of my childhood. Home made chuknidopita for which I was given good training over my stay at Meliki, in Macedonia, North Greece (Dec’ 14). Since I like to cook, on initial interest from my side I was given the opportunity to learn making traditional greek food with me getting recipes of chuknidopita, tiropita and I was allowed to help them stuff the turkey to be prepared for christmas. I had an opportunity to eat kurabiye, melomakarano, drink rucomelo, kafesi elliniko, yaprakya, avgolemono, original homemade chipourou and the list is never ending.

I was introduced to the beautiful landscapes of the mountain ranges of Epirus, the magnificent polyphytos dam/ lake at Servia and then head over to Athens.

On reaching the city of Athens, you can see the history of the world in front of your eyes — Acropolis, Sounion, Elyfsina, Piraeus to name a few, but this is not what I noticed the most. The lifestyle was so much like my home country. Even things like illegal car parking, people jumping signals, stray dogs on the roads, smog in the air made me feel so much at home. New city, new family, same culture not an iota different. And the story continued. I made a point to meet all my friends in Greece before I left back to the Netherlands. Last evening before I had to leave I met my closest friends at a cafe in Plateia Plastira, we were having a good time in the company of Jack Daniels when suddenly I realized that the good days were about to be over. It filled me with sadness but I could not show it. Also, since it was getting late and I had an early flight the next day, we had to leave. One of my friends gesture just touched my heart. Before she bid farewell to me, she gave me a wooden cross, which belonged to her. The feeling cannot be explained. The next day I said my goodbyes to the friend I was staying with and left for the airport. I was waiting for my flight and before I knew it, my eyes were moist filled with tears. A little girl sitting next to me gave me a weird look as if telling me “suck-it-up-and-pull-your-shit-together-dude” and I just wiped my eyes clean and smiled at her. The 3-hour long flight back to amsterdam made me recall the food, the people, the conversations, the smokes, the alcohol, the beauty of Greece and the inspiration I was taking back with me to the Netherlands, a catalyst which will stay with me for a long long time.

What I have realized is that all of us are different and this difference is independent of culture or race you come from. As we travel or move to different places around the world across cultures, we want to find people who share our point of view or atleast who are compatible with us. Fortunately for me I have found people with whom I am compatible. Being a Christian, I believe this was God’s plan for me such that the sequence of events during my masters from striking up friendship with my neighbour to MSc thesis under a greek professor to finding a family amongst my friends that has made me take each step closer to the greeks. It does not mean that I can like each and every greek just like I cannot appreciate every indian I meet. It shall be very naive of me to expect everyone to be good, that shall not help me appreciate the good ones around at least, so we need a balance. Had I been somewhat different in my thinking , maybe I could feel attached to the chinese per say!

These days I try to learn more of the language and watch documentaries on Greece. I want to understand on a psyche level how we came to live with such similarities even though India and Greece are miles apart. What binds our way of thinking. Was it the kingdom of Alexander the great (that spanned till modern day India) which brought about this intellectual correlation or was it something else. I guess I will have to make more trips to this amazing country and reason with better background knowledge to find out more. Hopefully I can write another article which has more technical nitty-gritty about India and Greece.

Till then “Sagapo Ellada ❤”

NOTE: When my friends to whom I have referred to in this read this, I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything.

❤ Euxaristo poli ❤