Tag: society

Resistance

Martha was the pickiest eater her colleagues knew. She’d decline late-night parties and would never go to the hot dog stand. She ate from her packed lunch, often some chicken and quinoa, oatmeal and fruit, or whole-wheat tortilla with meat.

When they went for lunch treats, Martha would choose salad with dressing on the side. Her team would roll their eyes and “LOL” to each other while she’d pick on her salad, looking unperturbed.

But unknown to all, Martha had a poster of mascarpone pizza in her bedroom, right next to a photo of her obesity-stricken family.

Save Our Souls

save-our-souls

When I realised I had to go into the city — about 50 kilometres — to get a document signed at the local government office, I groaned. That’s neither a fun nor a cheap ride.

I booked a cab. As soon as I got into the vehicle, I sent the vehicle number, the driver’s name, phone number, and my destination to a close friend of mine. And then I called my friend and enquired — loud enough so that the driver heard me — if she had received my text.

It’s the safest way (until proven otherwise) to travel in India. And to cope with the local needs, cab companies have now introduced various options for riders to call for help with just a tap. As soon as you book a cab, you’ll get a message prompting you to share details of your ride to at least three people. During the ride, you’ll see a flashy red banner that’ll call your emergency contacts in seconds.

It’s protocol.

—

Having wound up a rough week at work, I was home texting a friend of mine. He had just moved abroad and had been busy unpacking and settling down. It was the first time we got to chatting in weeks.

We were discussing work when my friend said he was considering a job as a cab driver. He mentioned Uber, but anything similar would do too. Plus, this friend of mine loves driving, and the street plan in his area is great for that.

We were still talking about Uber when he informed me that cabs in that country don’t have the SOS option.

It took me a while to register that. I thought back to the previous day when I had hailed a cab and realised — with shame — that I live in a country where caution is ingrained so deep into our brains that we want them even in our apps. We don’t trust our society and we’re proud to showcase SOS as a marketable feature.

People halfway across the world, however, don’t even see the need for it.

It seems insignificant, but it says a lot about our lifestyle. We’re so obsessed with being careful that if a cab company doesn’t have the emergency feature, we look down on it just because it doesn’t have the emergency feature.

Well, that says a lot more about us than it does about the cab company’s morality and ethics.

Our conversation lasted a good 40 minutes. But every minute after that, I’ve been thinking about the SOS. So we’ve become a nation that deprives the assurance of basic safety to our citizens. Who’s to save our souls now?

—|—

And with that question, I’ll wind up this year. It’s been great publishing a post a day, every day through 2016. It’s made me realise a lot about myself, all of which I’ll cover next year.

Have a happy new year, folks.

Judge Not

We’re all always judging others. We take one look at people and pass decisions. Attire, attitude, or anything in between, could make us roll our eyes and drop our jaw.

I do it quite a lot, too. When I see someone hailing a cab, for instance, for a distance they could cover in public transport, I raise eyebrows. They’re the cause for jammed roads and blocked walkways. And yet, today, when I took a long-distance cab, I requested my driver to drop me at the doorstep. I could have just walked from the street to my door — that’s what I always do — but I’d had a bad day and was too distraught to walk that little distance.

That’s when I wondered. How would’ve I reacted if it had been someone else? The painful realisation: I would’ve raised eyebrows and shaken my head in disapproval.

Sometimes, it’s just too easy to assume. It’s too easy to brand someone as lazy, selfish, or arrogant. What’s difficult, though, is understanding their situation. We expect others to sympathise with our problems before naming us names. But when the table turns, when we have to understand someone else’s situation, we’re seldom willing.

We think first impressions make the best, but we forget that anyone could have a bad day. We think second chances don’t make a difference, but they mean the world sometimes.

Today, I learned a lesson: never judge a person on the first encounter. We could be correct, but we could also be in the wrong. Because we’d never anticipate who’d surprise us when.

And Bob Marley said it best:

Judge not

Before you judge yourself.

Judge not

If you’re not ready for judgement.

My Big Fat Fake Society

If you look up “caste” in Wikipedia, the first thing you’d see is a detailed explanation of India’s caste system. We pioneered the art of classifying people according to their birth. We mark and judge others by something they have no control over themselves. We are the vile people who shun our fellows because they’re different. Oh, and we’re also the first ones to name America a racist country.

We, Indians, are a fake society. Here’s how our system works: We live inside a cocoon of a society pretending we’re all-inclusive forward-thinkers. However, every day, every meaningless conversation at home or at familial gatherings would revolve around caste.

Shocking? Wait till you hear the rest.

If I announce to my family, at dinner, that a friend is getting married the following month, their first question would be if the couple is from the same caste. The second question, whether they belong to our caste.

And if I even dare to tell my family that I’m considering working abroad, their biggest worry would be to find a groom (in our caste) who wouldn’t be threatened by such a wife. My, it’s an abomination to want to live in a foreign country alone.

Even though plenty of men (in our caste) nowadays live in first-world countries, they’re nevertheless reluctant to marry a girl who’d talk about something more than what’s for dinner. It hurt a lot to hear it from my mother herself because I only see absurdity sprawled all over such a situation.

I had thought no one would be so silly now, but when I look around, all my married cousins went through the same excruciating filter. Pity some of them didn’t even recognize it. Some, of course, just didn’t care because they could immigrate to a country that sees snow. I know a friend whose parents had her blood group matched with her husband’s; she didn’t care a bit. It’s a little unrelated, but you get the idea.

It’s one thing to live amidst a limiting society, but another thing altogether to live in a closed caste system. There are plenty of tribes and societies across the world imposing unthinkable restrictions on women and children. But the difference is that they don’t hide it. They declare it as their tradition and take pride in it. (Whether it’s right or not is a debate for another time.)

The beloved caste system I’m in, however, hides in plain sight. It isn’t uncommon for a bunch of men at a family wedding, to brag about how shaving twice a day, every day would uphold their caste pride — because some castes ban men from growing facial hair. Amidst a larger crowd, though, they’d pretend as if caste is the last thing in their mind. Sad story: Until a few weeks ago, their pretense had me fooled too. It’s little things like these that make the biggest mark and hurt the most. And it’s shenanigans like these that degrade and warp the minds of every youngster in our society.