Mukharji's visit to Europe is a Funny, Interesting and Necessary Commentary on English Culture Awareness

T.N. Mukharji’s “A Visit to Europe” was actually quite fascinating to me.  The fact that the European men and women found their culture fascinating, almost in a barbaric sense was the thing that got to me.  For example, in the first paragraph when they talk to the waitress and one of the people that was in Mukharji’s party tells her that he has had around 250 wives and that he murdered the 40^th wife because she could not cook porridge well made me laugh out loud to be honest.  The fact that the waitress would even believe that he had over 250 wives and killed one is just plain absurd.  It just goes to show how culturally unaware the people of England were at the time when it came to cultures outside of Europe.  What also made this interesting is that India was a British colony at the time, and the people still had now idea of their customs.  Later on in the piece when he talks about the time he was sitting in a restaurant and he was getting glances from people all around the room was quite funny as well.  Just because he was dressed in a different manner, the people thought he was a complete outsider to their customs and English culture.  But when the young lady comes over and talks to him for a while, she realizes that he is in fact an intelligent man, who is good at speaking English and aware of English customs.  She even compliments the band that was playing that were from his country.  I will admit that this piece made chuckle and laugh quite a bit, due to the fact of how ignorant and oblivious were to Indian culture.  Most of them probably still viewed Mukharji and his company as uncivilized but in fact, they were the more intelligent ones, and were able to see just how culturally inept the English were at the time.