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GOING NATIVE

At home in Kerala

Photo: PRIYADERSHINI S

Home sweet home Mami Davis with her husband Davis Sebastian .

From Kumamoto city near Nagasaki to Kochi it has been a long journey for Mami Davis. Married to Davis Sebastian who runs a software company, Indocosmo Systems Pvt Ltd., Mami started her own small travel company, Evergreen Travels to “remain close to her friends from back home, whom I missed terribly. This keeps me in touch with Japan.” She married Davis in 1992 after having met him a year before. “He came to study in my hometown. A common friend introduced us. We became very good friends but marriage came up quite suddenly,” she smiles. It was her sister-in-law who draped her in a sari, “for a good impression,” on her arrival to Kochi in 1995. But she had come before to Kerala with Davis to decide whether she could live here. “I went to Marari beach resort and enjoyed so much that I felt I can stay in this country.” And so that was it.

But soon Mami was faced with a tall request from her future mother-in-law. “She made a strong request that I should change my religion. I was a Buddhist but my mother was a Catholic. So for three months before my marriage I attended catechism classes everyday and was baptised. My father-in-law was fine with everything. Except for this my mother-in-law was very helpful. I had no problems in adjustment.” Before moving into Kochi Mami lived in Pala for a few months.

Mami loves Kerala food though she hardly cooks. She now makes Japanese noodles “sometimes” for her only daughter Bijin. She has worn the sari just three times and finds it very difficult to walk in. “It’s the same with the kimono,” she adds quickly in true Japanese politeness. Her travel company promotes Kerala cuisine and Ayurveda. “The Japanese tourists are not great sightseers of landscape but love historical monuments. In Kerala they come for the food and Ayurveda.” A pharmacologist, she enrolled for a short course in Ayurveda to enable her explain the ancient science to her guests. Problems of domestic help, chaotic traffic, and carelessly flung garbage are just some of the things Mami has got very used to. “The garbage problem will never happen in Japan. Sometimes I want to fight with the mayor,” says an agitated Mami. “Now I have become very Indian. Earlier I was very quiet but now very strong.” There was a time when Mami used to drive around in the city but it was the Japanese way of giving way to others that made it impossible for her to negotiate the traffic. “At that rate I was at one place forever,” she recalls. Now Mami does not drive.

Another thing that jars her senses are the pictures in the newspapers here. “They show dead bodies in the paper here. In Japan it is never done.” But despite these drawbacks, the differences in culture Mami says she now prefers to live here in Kerala. She has acquired the Indian ways. “I can no longer walk as fast as people do in Japan. When I go back I take two days to adjust to the place.” But how much of an Indian she has truly become is in the fact that she now needs a God. “I have become more faithful than him,” she says pointing to her husband. Though Japan is really heavenly it does not have a strong religion, she laments. “That’s why the younger people are directionless,” she feels. And India gives her religion in good dose.

P. S

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