When people move to a new country, they expect to encounter differences in language, food, weather or traditions. Even simple actions that felt natural for years can suddenly feel out of place.

I remember experiencing this myself when I first stepped outside India. There were situations where people reacted differently than I expected. At one point, I even wondered if I was being subjected to racism.

Culture is More Than Personality

When you enter a new culture, it is easy to interpret unfamiliar behaviours through the lens of your own experiences. What feels normal to you may be strange to others, and vice versa. But as time passed, I began to realize that most of what I was experiencing had very little to do with race and much more to do with the unwritten systems. Every culture operates according to a set of invisible rules. Once I understood that, everything started making sense.

One of the biggest mistakes we make when encountering different cultures is assuming that people's behaviour reflects their personality. We might think that they are unfriendly or cold. But what we are observing is not personality at all. It is culture.

If we think of culture simply as a collection of traditions or festivals, then we are wrong. It is a social operating system which influences how people communicate, how they build relationships, how they define respect and even how they read basic human interactions.

How Indian Social Behaviour Feels Different

India is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. From childhood, most of us grow up surrounded by people with extended families. We travel in crowded buses and trains. We celebrate festivals with entire communities. Personal and social boundaries often overlap there. As a result, sharing became a habit. Food is the simplest example. In many Indian schools and workplaces, opening a friend’s lunchbox and taking a bite is not considered strange. It is seen as a sign of closeness and affection. At that moment, nobody needs a formal invitation.

Similarly, asking personal questions is often viewed as a way of showing interest. Questions about family, education, marriage or future plans may come around us within minutes of meeting someone. For us, this feels like a connection while for outsiders, this can seem intrusive.

Another interesting example of cultural difference comes from something as ordinary as perfume. In India, wearing fragrance is considered as courtesy. Given the hot climate, crowded public spaces and close physical proximity in daily life, being mindful of how one smells can be seen as a way of respecting others. But in many Western public settings, strong fragrances are discouraged. At first, this seems so confusing as why would something intended to be pleasant be considered inappropriate. The answer to it lies in their environmental context as they generally have more physical distance from one another and strong scents can feel overwhelming.

Culture is Infrastructure

We often tend to assume that our own way of interacting is normal because it is the only system we have known throughout our lives. Because of that, when people behave differently, we see them as exceptions rather than recognizing that they are operating according to a different set of social expectations.

Just as roads guide traffic without us consciously thinking about them, cultural norms also guide our interaction without us realizing that they exist. Only when we travel or interact with people from different backgrounds and we find that what felt universal to us was actually local.

Looking back, many of the situations that initially confused me now seem obvious. The people I encountered were not difficult. They were not intentionally excluding me or not necessarily judging me. They were simply following the social rules they had learned throughout their lives just as I was following mine. The challenge was not their behaviour. The challenge was my interpretation where I was interpreting their behaviour through the framework I had always known. When I stopped assuming and judging, I started to observe and learn. That is the real value of cultural exposure. The more we understand those invisible rules, the more effectively we can connect with one another.

We are living in a connected world, and cultural intelligence has become just as important as technical knowledge. Working in health tech as a founder, I travel frequently and work with international teams. Every interaction reminds me that success is not only about expertise or strategy, but also about understanding how people think, communicate and interpret the world around them.

What cultural shock has changed the way you see the world?