The Whistler

The other day I noted that whenever one of Conrad’s brothers talks to Isabelle on the phone, they whistle at her. I asked Conrad why this was. He said, “All Indian men whistle at babies.” Then I remembered that whenever we are at the Indian Grocery store the men there always stop and smile and whistle at her too. Consequently, I find Indian men much more friendly towards kids than American men.

As a matter a fact, they are much more family oriented than the American males. There is no “peter pan” mentality in India. You know, the “I wanna be a kid forever”mentality. And their permissive mama’s just cluck and say, “Well, boys will be boys.”

Actually there is a song in a Hindi movie (that’s in English, called “Bride & Prejudice”…I highly recommend!) that goes “No Life Without Wife.” And the moral of the song is that you really don’t have a life until you get a wife. This is why I recommend a good solid Christian Indian man to all of my single girlfriends. And good luck with that.

Back to my story, tho. When I was chatting with my husband about this observation, he said, “But Indian women do not whistle.” He noted that back when his family was visiting us I was walking around the house whistling and my sister-in-law, Sudha, and his mom stopped and looked at each other. I asked him what it means when a woman whistles and the best I could get out of him was something along the lines of it means you are a loose moraled woman. Oh no.

I kept thinking back to my two trips to India, all of the time Conrad’s family was here, and all of the time I probably whistled. I whistle a lot, I think. Oh no. And then I started to think what whistling means in American culture. The best I could come up with is that it indicates that you are care-free, or light hearted. What do you think? Do you whistle too?