Among other things, participating in Gallery Night Providence was one of the 'things to do' I have been planning for quite a long time to know more about my new city of residence and meet new people. As meeting people and knowing about the city were two important objectives, I decided to go for the theme based guided walks/tours offered last month rather than visiting the participating venues myself. Read more about the tour itself in the previous post.
Everybody at the information desk was happy to talk and give more information. The most interesting conversation of the evening however was with an older lady. We were talking about Myanmar, a word she could not place. I described it as Burma, the country to the east of Bangladesh. We had a lot more confusing back and forth as she thought it was next to Pakistan and I could not understand how she could miss the whole big chunk of India in the middle.
After some back and forth we realized that the visual of the map in her head was fine, facts from history was the problem. She was in school when Bangladesh was still part of Pakistan and was not aware of its formation in 1971. Part of history that I took for granted as part of world history was not an obvious nugget of information for her.
Some of it is also about geography and how we see things as near-far, relevant-irrelevant, or in size big-small based on where we currently live. More on perception of geography and how we see maps some other time.
Everybody at the information desk was happy to talk and give more information. The most interesting conversation of the evening however was with an older lady. We were talking about Myanmar, a word she could not place. I described it as Burma, the country to the east of Bangladesh. We had a lot more confusing back and forth as she thought it was next to Pakistan and I could not understand how she could miss the whole big chunk of India in the middle.
After some back and forth we realized that the visual of the map in her head was fine, facts from history was the problem. She was in school when Bangladesh was still part of Pakistan and was not aware of its formation in 1971. Part of history that I took for granted as part of world history was not an obvious nugget of information for her.
Some of it is also about geography and how we see things as near-far, relevant-irrelevant, or in size big-small based on where we currently live. More on perception of geography and how we see maps some other time.
No comments:
Post a Comment