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SYDNEY, N.S. — Cape Breton University student Jaya Kaushik may be more than 10,000 kilometres from her home in India, but you wouldn’t know it after taking a stroll around campus.

“So many Indians, right? It’s like India-Cape Breton University,” said Kaushik, who moved from Punjab in December and began classes at CBU this week.

Jaya Kaushik

The 21-year-old business student was joined by more than 500 other new international students — the vast majority of them from India — who enrolled at CBU this semester. Coming on the heels of more than 1,000 people who arrived from India in the fall, the latest batch of newcomers has boosted overall enrolment at CBU to 4,932 students — more than St. Francis Xavier University.

Being part of the largest cohort at CBU has dialled down the voltage of any culture shock but Kaushik and her compatriots are learning a lot about the language, religious and cultural differences within their own country.

Walking through the hallways at CBU, you might hear students from India speaking a variety of different tongues, depending on which part of the South Asian nation they’re from.

“If there’s a common language that most people understand it’s Hindi because that’s the national language of India,” explained Kaushik, who was stationed outside the cafeteria this week with Indian students George Innasi, Farhin Mansuri, Astha Aggarwal, Rohit Verma, and Pamkaj Kumar Sharma, handing out information pamphlets and offering advice to new students — foreign and domestic — this week.

George Innasi

Innasi, a 22-year-old business management student, is from Chennai, the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu in the south of the country off the Bay of Bengal where most people speak Tamil.

He said when Kaushik and Aggarwal, 22, who are both from Punjab state in the north, chat in their native Punjabi, he doesn’t register a word. It’s the same when Mansuri, a 21-year-old electronics and controls student from Gujarat, India's westernmost state, speaks Gujarati.

“When they both are talking Punjabi, I don’t understand a word at all. Same way when she’s talking with her friends from Gujarat, I can’t understand literally any word, or a single word. It’s a cultural difference,” he said.

The cuisine also varies from region to region.

“Everything is different. In the south they eat non-vegetarian and we are pure vegetarian. South they eat beef, pork, fish — everything,” said Kaushik, who has family living in British Columbia and Toronto and has visited Canada regularly since childhood. She even spent two years of high school in Vancouver before returning to India to graduate.

Innasi said spices and starches also take different forms in the two regions.

“They eat a lot of cumin-based food; we go for a lot of chili-based food. We eat a lot of rice with our things; they eat a lot of chapati with their things, or roti. Even in the food it’s like a vast difference,” he said. “It’s a very big differences for us because I don’t know totally about how her culture is and she doesn’t know about my culture.”

Samual Shaji

As co-ordinator of CBU student union’s multicultural hub, Samual Shaji has a first-hand appreciation of the cultural diversity at CBU every day. Students from 42 countries now attend CBU and dozens of different languages are spoken on campus.

“We are on the path of being the most diverse university in the country,” said the 20-year-old environmental engineering student from Kerala, a state in the southwest of India where Malayalam is the most commonly spoken language.

Shaji is eager to spread CBU’s newfound cultural wealth to the wider community.

Since the school year began, he’s helped organize a multicultural festival at the Joan Harriss Cruise Pavilion in Sydney, and, most notably, rallied some of his fellow international students to help save a local food drive. Later this month, the hub is inviting all students and members of the public to attend a series of cultural exchanges and displays at the campus cafeteria Jan. 28-31 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“One thing that I believe the most is that diversity reduces the imperfection in the community because as diverse the people is, that wider the aspects will be,” he said.

While the sudden influx of so many international students has led to concerns about the availability of housing and access to transportation, Shaji dismissed the idea that these problems are unique to any particular nationality.

“I personally know people from every community in Cape Breton and in CBU. The greatest thing that I learned from this is that until I start my job, I thought that different communities had its own problems, but that’s not the thing. As a student, even though he is an international or a domestic, problems that they face are the same. You might come across housing, you might come across other problems, but all these problems are common to every student without respect to any cultures,” said Shaji, adding that he believes CBU is doings its best to address those issues.

“I have dealt with a lot of student issues but none of that is a community issue — it’s a student issue, an issue that all students face. Everyone’s the same. International students doesn’t have place to live. Does the domestic students have a place to live? Some students are living in North Sydney, Coxheath, Westmount and they are coming to college. They want to move near to Sydney. They want to move near to Glace Bay. Do they have a house? International students do have cars and they too are living in Westmount, so they too can go there. How can it just be an international student issue? It’s an all student issue.

“That’s what I communicate with the university as my prime goal — things are not community issues, it is student issues. That’s how we address it. Every issue is a student (issue) and we address it as a student issue.”

Lenore Parsley

CBU communications manager Lenore Parsley said the university is taking steps to help its new students. In September, CBU signed a memorandum of understanding with Cape Breton Transit that saw the municipal service add more buses and trips back and forth to campus, as well as a Sunday run. They also hired an off-campus housing co-ordinator who is working with local landlords and people who have rooms to rent.

“We have created a space within our website where all of those rooms and locations are listed,” she said. “The hope is that we’ve created an easy-access portal for students in need of housing to go on and to be able to find different options.

“There was over 100 last time I checked, so there are rooms, there are locations available for students, they just have to go on there and check.”

Kaushik said she was able to find a room to rent in downtown Sydney fairly easily before she arrived in Cape Breton. Most of the questions she fielded from fellow freshmen this week were typical of any student unfamiliar with a new campus and city, such as directions to their classrooms and information about bus routes. Also, like many young people accustomed to a lifetime of mom’s cooking, they need help with their culinary skills, including Kaushik, who had never cooked before arriving in Cape Breton.

The only real difference between Indian and Canadian students is what they choose to prepare.

After calling her mother and watching some YouTube videos, Kaushik made chole — a chickpea-based dish — and a pudding-like dessert called halva.

“I’ve tried Kraft Dinner mac and cheese but I like to cook Indian food because I think it’s much healthier,” she said.

Related:

• CBU students get first taste of Cape Breton’s colder weather

• Desi deluge: CBU now has more than 1,000 students from India

• Cape Breton families caught in rental squeeze

• Sydney food drive saved by international students

• CBRM, CBU work together to put two Cape Breton Transit buses on the road on Sundays



christopher.connors@cbpost.com