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Friday, January 17, 2014

Beyond the Gridiron: My Thoughts on American Indian: An American Family's First Year of Life in India

Hello everyone! I hope you are all having a nice day today. As you all know in the intro of my title, it says "Beyond the Gridiron". That means that this is an article that is not sports related at all. I may use other terms such as "Outside the Ropes" or "After the Whistle", but I have not settled into one just yet. Therefore the names of my articles outside sports is still a work in progress.

Anyways, enough about me. This is about my thoughts on a documentary I saw on YouTube called American Indian, which is about a story of an American family living a full year in India. Before I get to everything else, here is a teaser trailer of American Indian:




The documentary American Indian was created by +Ford Seeuws, who is also known as +thesurfingviolinist on YouTube. In this documentary, it chronicles Ford and his family's life living in India, and the cultural adjustments that were made coming from the United States. The positive aspect I liked about this documentary is that it doesn't show India in a negative light at all, unlike most Western media. Rather, it shows that there are positive aspects of India that you would like to see as well. In the documentary, there are footage from his previous YouTube videos that chronicles his everyday life as well as travelling to various places around India. The good news is that it is not only recycled footage from past YouTube videos, there are also footage that is found exclusively in the documentary itself.

What I learned from this documentary is that India has a lot to offer if you ever want to travel in the future to there. One is where there is a restaurant near Jama Masjid called "Karim's" from what I saw sells really tasty naan. If I do visit India in the future, I will make an attempt to visit that restaurant and try it. Another thing I learned is that there are various monuments where some you are free to take pictures and others where you are forbidden to take a single click. Monuments such as Taj Mahal will allow tourists to take pictures, but one place where it is forbidden to take photography is Akshardam. From what I heard, Akshardam is a temple where you take take pictures from outside. However, once you step within the walls of the place, photos are not allowed and the only photo that can be taken is from the official photographer. To me, I find that very ludicrous and complete BS, but every place has a rule and rules has to be followed.

Another aspect I learned has to do with cross cultural communication. There are different cultures throughout the world, and sometimes we assumes that communication with different cultures is sometimes impossible. At the end of the day, we are all people and we all share the same Earth. Cross-cultural communication can be difficult, but not impossible. We all have to make an effort to understand each other. The world is very diverse and not everyone is the same. Everyday, the world is becoming more global and we must learn to adapt to every culture in order to be successful communicators.

Overall, this was a very entertaining and educational documentary. Also, this served as a backdoor pilot to a web series that shares the same name. Check out the web series as well. More information is on The Surfing Violinist's YouTube page.

Anyways, that is all I have to say for now. Please check out the documentary in the link shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taNW5IOU9zE. It is free to view, and you don't have to pay any extra money to watch. As The Surfing Violinist would say, "Zabardast Raho! Fatafat!".

- Kalind Patel

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