The Broad Reality of the Altered Indian Mindset

Firstly, thank you everyone for reading this blog over the past year and for your constant support! This week I started receiving emails about any help/advice I could offer with respect to each of your individual situations, and I hope my comments helped you out. It feels good knowing that I may have helped some people the way others have helped me.

Moving on, today's blog post addresses an important issue - the Indian mindset. No, this is not GMAT-related, so if that's what you're here for, then this is not the post for you. My dad has a habit of sending me around four to five articles a day from the Times of India, just to learn and keep in touch with whats happening back at home. And a couple of days ago, he sent me this article, titled "Shining India, swaggering India".

The title of the article as well as the opening sentence - Rage is the dominant emotion in India today - can be perhaps a little misleading. The article doesn't discuss rage and how to overcome it. Rather, the article addresses the Indian mentality of power, and how power is more abused than put to good use - and this is addressed right from the second line.

How many times do we speak of corrupt politicians and other people of authority? The following paragraph is spot on:

Time was when politicians showed humility, even if fake and contrived, to the public, fully conscious of the optics of the folded hands. Today, a chief minister walks off in a huff when her constituents ask questions that she finds inconvenient. And then sends cops to check out the antecedents of the questioners, who are college students. Her message is unambiguous: I am powerful and, therefore, can do whatever I want to you serfs. 

It is to be noted that abusing power is not restricted to the celebs. Ordinary people abuse waiters, maids, security guards, small shop owners and others with similar professions. There is no civility in everyday conversations. I don't mean this to come off as arrogance, but to give an example, I use 'please' and 'thank you' pretty often. Shop owners and waiters are literally startled when that happens - and it even goes to the extreme where sometimes I am asked to pay more in shops as they think I'm a foreigner. All because I was polite. As the article says:

Such messages, coming from those who are in public life and should be role models of civility, filter down rapidly. The signal is unambiguous: power allows you to strut and squash anyone who is beneath you. More money, better job, bigger car are all markers of influence and muscle, which must be deployed to show the lower orders their place. To these superior beings, the ordinary laws do not apply. VIPs of all hues, for example, do not believe in queues of any kind. How often do we see this sense of entitlement being played out at airports, where the great and the good breeze past security? Body checks and boring lines at immigration are not for them.

The rising rage is directly related to our increasing lack of civility. Sorry seems to be a word that has disappeared from our lexicon. When common courtesies, such as holding the door open for someone behind you, vanish, a society is well on the road to boorishness and eventually rage. Good manners are the bedrock of civilised social transactions; are we a good-mannered people? 

The really sad thing is that people accept this - people accept the fact that we Indians have different rules of treating people depending on who that is, something even the writer of the article noted:

The bizarre part is that we, as citizens of a democratic country, freely accept and even justify such feudal inequality. After Shah Rukh Khan, who finds it difficult to keep his temper in check in India, was held up for questioning at an American airport, many Indians were outraged because a celebrity was treated in this manner. It did not occur to them that for an American customs official, there are no exceptions, only the rules that must be followed. We quietly and happily submit to the Indian way of doing things, which is to have a different set of rules for VIPs; there our sense of rage deserts us. 

How on earth can people even think that they are better than others because of what they do? What about those who happen to be born into a rich family and start acting like they own the world? What about those who use their fame to act like they are God's gift to the rest of our country?

No one knows when this will end. The biggest shame is that our rage seems to be directed towards those at the bottom of the social ladder, those unable to defend themselves, those who are expected to merely surrender as the 'superiors' use their authority on them. As the writer of the article asks:

What will happen if one day they start showing their rage? 

"Don’t forget you’re going there primarily to study!"

Applying for a visa to study in the United Kingdom was quite a daunting task. Up until now, all these formalities were taken care of by my parents; all I had to do was to turn up and have a good time. But now that I would be living by myself for a whole year with my parents around 6500 miles away, I was apparently old enough and responsible enough to take care of this all on my own. After reading a zillion documents on which form to complete (I had to fill in two out of 2892632 forms on their website) and how to complete them, filling them out by hand, rewriting all my information after finding several mistakes, submitting an online application after learning that all my previous work was wasted, and waiting several days filled with dread (okay, I’m dramatizing, but still, you get the idea), I’m happy to announce that I’m (finally) tension-free – I GOT MY VISA.

So I gleefully turned to the next task – packing. I love packing. I don’t know why people grumble about it so much; you just take a bunch of stuff and unceremoniously dump it in a bag. No need to bother with the organization of it all, after all, who cares about all that when you’re allowed 40 kilos on the flight?

But when you’re a girl, you end up wanting to take much more than you need. My bed is now filled with clothing, arranged in several piles. I’m going away for one year, gotta take ALL my clothes with me, right? Wrong. Mom walks into my room, gives one glance at my bed, and shudders involuntarily. You have too many clothes, and you won’t be taking all of them. I already have one bag filled with bedding and utensils that are necessary. Because clothes are apparently not.

Then, shoes. I pulled out all both my trainers, all my flats, and all my heels. Dumped both trainers and all flats into the bag, and then handpicked, after much hesitation, six pairs of heels. Like I said before, I’m going for a whole year. And fresher’s week (or WeekOne as it is known in Nottingham UK) is supposed to be full of hardcore partying – I can’t possibly wear the same thing twice, right? Again, wrong. How can you wear heels when it’s snowing? Like it snows the whole year around. I gave in a little, but just a little – I packed four.

Next, bags. Now bags at least you will admit that variety is required; the argument of whose gonna keep track of what shoes you have on doesn’t work here. So I take all my bags out of the closet, unload them on my bed, and again, after much hesitation, I pick six. Luckily there was no argument there. Clearly moms also feel that six bags are alright. Or maybe they’ve run out of silly excuses - no need to pack sleeveless clothing, it’s always cold there, or why do you need so much stuff? Its only one year, you’re not moving there!

And then dad walks in. His eyes sweep across the mess that is my room, and delivers the mother of all silliest statements - Don’t forget you’re going there primarily to study!

Kill me now.