Grape Nuts: An Indian in the U.S.

Abortions, guns and cereal

Bon Jour Global Jigsaw,

Its been a tough month of acculturation for me in the new country of chemotherapy that I’m currently traveling in. I lost my hair, but more than that there were days when I felt I’d lost my ability to feel happiness. I imagine this is what it must be like to be in the presence of dementors in Harry Potter novels. Luckily the chemo dementors are busy creatures and don’t stay for too long with any one victim. Today they’ve gone off to play elsewhere, and so I can write this newsletter. I am deeply grateful to be able to do so.

During this journey through this new landscape, as with all journeys to new territories, I have encountered aplenty of what today’s guest post writer, Mary Ganguli, calls “Grape Nut moments.”

She uses the term to refer to the cultural confusion everyone feels when outside of the context that is familiar to them. It’s when an American in Beijing asks for thirst quencher on a hot summer’s day and receives a mug of boiling water. (Read my post on China’s fixation with hot water here).

It’s when a European lands up for a massage in Indonesia and finds herself locked in a room with a masseuse with a seemingly terminal case of indigestion. In many parts of Southeast Asia the massage therapist’s role is to release the bad energy in the client by drawing it out via their hands and then expelling it through loud burps. The more the burps, the better the masseur is ostensibly doing their job.

It’s the Japanese person who arrives at a restaurant in Spain to eat dinner at 5:00pm while everyone else at the restaurant is still finishing their lunch.

Grape Nut moments fill the interstices of cultures and geographies. The trick is to allow them to provoke curiosity and humour rather than frustration.

In today’s post, Mary Ganguli, a Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, writes about some of the Grape Nut moments she encountered upon immigrating to the United States from India back in the 1970s.

I do hope you enjoy this. And I’d love to hear from you regarding your own Grape Nut occasion.

Also, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber to the Global Jigsaw, or gifting it as a Christmas present to a friend with discerning taste in reading :-)

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When I moved from India to the US in the late 1970s I thought I was a fairly well-informed immigrant. I had grown up reading American novelists, TIME and LIFE and MAD magazines, watching Hollywood films, knowing the songs of American musicians. A large part of acculturation, even when one knows the official language of a new country, is learning idioms and expressions and new ways in which familiar words are used, and one learns these from books and movies and songs.

One of my first thoughts when we came to interview for jobs in Pittsburgh was an “ah!” to the lyrics of the Paul Simon song where he “was boarding the Greyhound with Kathy.” I had yet to see a Greyhound but I did know it was a bus.

But there remained many mysteries.

One was a box of breakfast cereal I encountered in the supermarket. It had the tempting name of Grape Nuts. I bought it eagerly, but opening it was a profound disappointment. It contained neither grapes nor nuts and tasted like sawdust.

Ever since then, when I don’t understand something American, the phrase “Grape Nuts” springs to mind.

During our first year here, we were at the home of a family who had emigrated a few years earlier from the UK. Their British-born teenaged daughter and her American-born friend were discussing the meaning of the word “fair.” The British-born daughter, like her parents and like us, thought “fair” meant “fair to all,” or equitable. The American-born friend said she had always thought “fair” meant “fair to me,” or favorable.

I was reminded of this Grape Nut years later when Donald Trump criticized the media outlets which he felt were not fair to him.

It took me several years to decide to apply for American citizenship, in large part because I wanted to wait till I felt more American and understood America better. Some Grape Nuts stood in the way.

One was the issue of abortion; coming from a country where contraception was strongly encouraged and abortion for health reasons was legal, it was hard for me to understand some Americans so strongly opposed other people’s rights to terminate their own pregnancies.

Another was guns; coming from a country where civilians did not own guns, I could not understand why some Americans seemed to consider them essential household appliances. I had not previously known that these were contentious issues and could not grasp the grounds for the contention.

I finally bit the bullet, so to speak, and sent in my application for US citizenship. It’s a long and complex process about which native-born Americans have no idea. When I was finally given an appointment for my citizenship interview, I reviewed an article about the 100 questions I was likely to be asked about American history and government.

I was only asked six questions. What is the significance of the stripes on the American flag? What is the name of the national anthem? (I wasn’t asked to sing it, which I had been prepared to do). Who was the main author of the Constitution? What are the three branches of government? What is the function of the legislative branch? Who will become President if the President and Vice President both die?

If naturalized citizens are required to know these things, why is it not required of native-born citizens?

Grape Nut!

My interviewer said “Congratulations! You have passed the history and government test.” I was about to exhale when she asked “Are you willing to bear arms for the United States?” I pointed out that I had already checked the boxes on the form to indicate that I was not prepared to bear arms but was willing to provide non-combatant service. She countered “But would you bear arms if you were required to?”

Grape Nut!

Was bearing arms now a requirement for American citizenship? It was not one of the 100 questions! I remained silent, pondering my options. Should I say “no, and I am willing to go to jail as a conscientious objector” or would she not appreciate my demonstrating that I knew my rights?

She followed up “If the law required it, would you bear arms for the United States?” I was pretty sure the law would not require it but discretion is the better part of valor. I sighed and said, “If the law required it, I would.”

She said “congratulations” again, changed my responses on the form, asked me to initial her changes, and I was done. A few weeks later I attended the swearing-in ceremony at the courthouse, along with a roomful of other new citizens. The paper from which we collectively read aloud said that we swore either to bear arms or to provide non-combatant services for the United States.

Grape Nuts!

Mary Ganguli

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That’s all for this week folks. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and an ab fab New Year filled with books, travel, ice cream and deep sleep.

See you in 2023! Its going to be a great year :-)

Pallavi

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