28 chapter
a routine basis. It was hard for me to understand why people did not say nani
until I asked myself why we say “thank you” in English. I realized that saying
“thank you” was a way to symbolically give back what someone had given you,
to even the balance so that people could go back to being autonomous indi-
viduals. “Th ank you” is, among other things, a counterprestation so that one
does not feel indebted or overly connected.^21 Th is would be inappropriate in
Kerala.
Th ere is very little privacy in Kerala, and it is generally assumed that people
do not want to be alone. While I was living in Trivandrum, a friend would
sometimes visit me unannounced by fi nding his way through my open back
door and appearing in my living room. My research assistant, Kavitha, told
me that she looked forward to having people to talk to when she commuted
home from Trivandrum on the train—something that is diffi cult to imagine
among urban commuters in the United States. Being alone is sometimes even
considered dangerous, and many spirit-possessed people I spoke to became
possessed when alone. Conversations between patients and their psychiatrists
could sometimes be overheard by other doctors and patients who were meet-
ing nearby, and inpatients often stayed in large communal rooms. Some doc-
tors, however, did sequester themselves to speak with patients, and patients
who could aff ord it paid for “private” accommodation at hospitals, which is to
say that they stayed in a room with only their accompanying family members
or friends.
Th roughout this analysis of the lives of patients and their problems, it is
important to be aware of the socially embedded, relational orientation to the self
that pervades much of people’s experience in India, which also co-exists with
realms of autonomy. Much has been written about the sociocentric or dividual
self in South Asia. In contrast to the egocentric or individual self, which sees
itself as an autonomous entity that is separate from society, the sociocentric self
is only intelligible in social context.^22 As Vaidyanathan (1989) describes:
An Indian thinks of himself as being a father, a son, a nephew, a pupil, and these
are the only “identities” he ever has. An identity outside these relationships is
almost inconceivable to him. It is very common in Indian households to hear
a person referred to as “Rekha’s mother” or as “Babu’s father,” and the people
concerned don’t feel diminished in the least by these self-abnegating nomen-
clatures. (151)Th e socially dispersed self repeatedly asserted itself during my stays in India.
In fact, as in Vaidyanathan’s example, I use relational names to identify rela-
tives of ill people, such as “Sreedevi’s mother,” as these were the identities they
presented to me.