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Comment by losvedir | Hacker News Reader

What a fun read! I've never been to India but it's fun to infer what the reverse culture shock would be for me from the points here. Like, can you not sit on the grass at a university there?

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As someone from Europe, who's visited the states many times, the idea that the US is comparatively pedestrian friendly to India to a level worth commenting on is surprising.

I think I'd definitely be run over if I ever went to India now

Yes, that is one comment that really stuck out for me, too, since I have read, listened to, and seen (YouTube) pretty much the opposite. Might be a (highly?) localized "phenomenon", due to university campus closeness and local drivers' awareness.

There's a difference between a walkable neighborhood and cars that look out for pedestrians. There are a lot of US neighborhoods where you wouldn't particularly want to walk through them since they're suburban wastelands, but cars will respect you if you do.

I spent a few months in Indonesia, and I swear, the culture shock coming back to North America was more of a culture shock than arriving in Indonesia.

Life was simple and means we're limited for the people of Indonesia, but everything they did followed a logical progression from the first principles of basic human needs, So nothing about it felt terribly strange.

In north America society has warped itself into some strange abstraction that doesn't make any sense.

i don't think it's about the grass (which generally they say not to walk or sit on, so as to not cause damage). Colleges/universities are run like schools (our schools are strict, have to wear uniform, mandatory attendance etc. etc.). So the level of freedom mentioned by OP in the U.S College, compared to India, would be 10x different

You can sit on the grass at a university or even sit in most places where you can physically sit. But it is not a very common thing to do. I would say the main reasons why most people dont do that is because it would get books and clothes dirty if you sit on most parks and outdoor spaces. I would not want my books and other items to get dirty when I study, and hence would avoid most such locations to study.

Having said that, you can find enough people sitting in the lawns and steps around most indian universities & colleges.

You can sit anywhere you want, but it almost always is so dusty or dirty that you'd rather not. I have seen people even avoiding seats in bus stands and preferring to stand instead.

I'm interested in the apparent intolerance of shirtless men, I didn't realize that was a thing.

To be fair, shirtless men are a lot less common in urban India. Not the same in the "countryside" or villages as we refer to rural areas.

India has certain public decency laws which prohibits exposure (not sure if shirtless would qualify), PDA, etc.

India is also famously not one of the fitter countries - so it's also a matter of body image issues.

> I'm interested in the apparent intolerance of shirtless men,

Not sure about India but in a lot of European countries walking shirtless on the street might be a fineable offence. A larger discussion on the subject can be found on this recent /r/europe thread. [1]

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/qixnsa/filling_up_a...

And in the places where it's not fineable it still doesn't happen. It would be super weird to see a shirtless person on a street in a Central or Northern European city, you'd either think they have some screws loose or they are pretty drunk.

Parks, beaches, saunas it would of course be normal.

Well.. it is more of a class thing outside of residential complexes. You can see a lot of Indian males shirtless or wearing a inner vest inside their homes, but visible from outside (e.g. on balconies, etc).

But out in public, the only men w/o a shirt would be those who are too poor to afford one or those who are poor, doing manual work and who want to get rid of their shirt on a hot day.

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