I think curiousity could play a great role in helping us to understand why others behave as they do, but also to examine our own rituals and purposes.
- Adrienne Clarkson, Canadian journalist and former Governor-General of Canada, “The Society of Difference,” 2007 Lecture of the LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium
After almost four months of travel in India, I am still trying to understand the Indian head bobble/wobble, a distinct head movement that Indians use instead of nodding, and which often answers our closed-ended questions (seeking a yes or no response) such as: “are you open or closed?;” “does the bus leave at 8 pm?;” “is this (name of Indian town we are trying to get to)?” The problem with the head motion for us is that we can never tell if it means “yes” or “no,” since other times it can mean “ok” or “maybe” or “i see your mouth is moving and sound is being produced, but i do not understand you, oh fair skinned people with so much hair on your arms.”
I’ve examined the many other places I’ve visited and lived in and they all seem to have a preponderance for nodding up and down to mean “yes” and nodding side-to-side to mean “no.” And really the purposes of these distinct head motions seem quite explicit to me. There is no confusion since one does not mean the other and really, there is no in between. Shoulders shrugging, while showing your palms can often mean “I don’t know.” Or a look of confusion works well. And “maybe” is just said as “maybe,” sometimes with a little pout or mouth curl thrown in for extra doubt. So really, there are a distinct said of head and body movements to mean, yes, no, maybe etc.
Maybe I just haven’t summoned enough curiousity to determine the logistics of the Indian head bobble, and how it is used.
See for yourself what we witness daily, via this video at YouTube.
A search online for “Indian head wobble (or bobble)” will yield many travelers blogs, either bemoaning or trying to decipher the nuances of this very south Asian head movement. Insight from anyone stumbling across this post, would be sincerely appreciated.
Heh. Yep. We remember all too well the fun of trying to figure out what was meant by the insidious bobbles. Sometimes the same bobble was, I swear, used to mean yes, no, I don’t know, or “well if you say so…”
Having fun over there?
It seems to me that when they start bobbling to their right (counterclockwise) it means “no”, and when they begin by tilting their head to their left (clockwise) it means “yes”…or it could be the other way around…maybe
Funny how we didn’t really notice this until you mentioned in your blog :)
Maybe because we’re so used to it we already understand or maybe it is different in India.
Thank you guys for the link :)
Any chance of coming back to KL before going home? Hehe