My Faux Pas: The Impenetrable Castle

Summary: Coming back from watching a movie with some colleagues at 11 pm, I found myself locked out with both the gate and front door deadbolted from the inside, with the only known keys in the landlord’s possession. Needless to say, it was embarrassing.

I’m sure this is the first of many culturally insensitive mistakes I will make.* By way of background, I’m currently staying with Anna on the third floor of a house, and the owner / landlord, Sadna, lives below us. Sadna is a very nice, respectable, motherly figure who has been nothing but kind to us. That is the Indian way.

It is also the Indian way (around Gomti Nagar, at least), for people to take security very seriously. There are usually gates with security guards, as well as at least five different potentially locked doors you need to get through until you can walk into your house. (This may lead many to think that India is in fact not a safe place, when Gomti Nagar is in fact as safe as it gets. I haven’t figured out exactly where the paranoia stems from.) Apparently, these doors get padlocked (from the inside) by 11 pm (maybe earlier). I discovered this the hard way.

Tonight, I went with a few coworkers and another visitor from the U.S. to see Delhi 6, a new Bollywood film (great movie, by the way). We saw the 7:35 pm show, but stayed for coffee afterward and I didn’t get back home until 11 pm. Anna stayed in for the night, so I figured I could just ring our bell and she could let me in. After about 5 minutes, Anna pops out from the second floor balcony and says that the entire house is locked down, and she can’t get out. Both the front gate and the front door are padlocked, and only the owner has the key. I therefore have no choice but to ring their doorbell and hold my head in shame while she let me in.

This may mean I now have a curfew, but when?

Update: Upon further thought, this was not the first culturally insensitive faux pas I’ve made. At SEWA, I greeted everyone I saw with “namaste” and raised my hands as if praying, only finding out at the end of our visit that “namaste” is a greeting used mainly by Hindus, and that Muslims instead use “adab” with one hand raised to the face as if about to eat.