When I was leaving for UK the one thing I was being continuously told was – “don’t be shocked by the cultural change”. When I left for UK I was all but 21, had had 1 boy friend and was general purpose very, for the want of a better word, “Indian” about the way people behaved as couples in public.
So when I did go to UK and saw how much more free their society was compared to ours, it had me reeling for 2 weeks. Now I am not exactly dehati about my ways but I guess I still am very wonderfully backward about PDA.
However, once I was back, I realized, all this while, it never was about PDA. The one thing that shocked me was the general rudeness of people. Not in UK, in India. When I was in UK, I was quite used to being treated well in general by men. They held doors open, they paid for drinks and meals and people in UK seemed to follow a “ladies first” approach. I know a lot of women right not are going to feel like I just flung the feminist revolution 100 years back by accepting I like these things but truth be told, everyone does. Who doesn’t like a little respect when standing in the super market queue or in queue for the bus?
Post my shift back, I have had the golden opportunity to work in a MNC in India. It is everything these MNC’s promise - you wear formals every day, loads of busy looking people bustling about the whole day, people sat in cubicles tapping away on their laptops and desktops rapidly and not to forget the ever so essential “calls” that everyone seems to be on. In a place like this, I guess it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that everyone has had a good education. At the very least, at least everyone here is a graduate. However, safe to assume education doesn’t translate to manners. If I had a penny for the number of times I have been standing in a queue for a bag check and some self important person has cut across and gone ahead with the bag check I would be rolling in pennies! Its small things like offering a seat to a woman, holding the door open and letting a woman pass by first seem to catch my eyes here. For a country that is proud of its ‘culture’ and how respectful we are of others, might I say, we aren’t doing a good job of it.
While discussing this issue, I was told by a friend that it’s impossible to be polite on a public transport. His exact words were “if I start being polite, I’m never gonna reach home”. At that point, having travelled in locals and buses during my undergrad days, I had to agree. However, on thinking it through, why can’t you be polite on public transport? I know I have given people my seat in the bus because I thought it was the right thing to do. If only little by little we actually followed the “right way”, I'm sure things wouldn’t be as crazy as they are now. Maybe if we only let people get off at stations before we got onto the train, if only we gave up our seat in the bus for that old man standing next to us and if only we helped that pregnant lady with her grocery bags, maybe being polite wouldn’t be that difficult a thing to do after all.
