Living in another country than your country of origin has all its pros and cons , Besides it makes you over sensitive to the behavior of people around you and attached to every little detail that reminds you of your country, hearing a fellow speaking your language or smelling the familiar spices from the food warming up in your office microwave always bring a smile on your face .
My work place has a lot of Indians so whenever I go down to cafeteria for lunch , I feel like I am in Bangalore or Chennai office with queues of Indians alongside the microwave to warm up their meals.The locals (Belgians) prefer to take food from canteen except few who bring their lunch from home , mostly it is us Indians who occupy all the microwaves during lunch time so normally it could take upto 10-15 minutes in the queue to warm up your lunch.
Today was one such another day of waiting in the Queue, so when it came our turn to warm up, me and my colleague, We decided to keep our boxes together and increase the timer instead of warming one by one. I think it took us less than 4 mins to finish , meanwhile we were standing there , there were those restless glances exchanged between the other Indians behind us as if we are taking a lifetime and those expressions of seeing a monkey on the microwave rather than a human being ! Generally they are polite and smiling when it comes to someone who is not Indian and cooking his food in Microwave for more than 10 minutes, it was such a disgust in their eyes of ‘ O my God these Desi pendu people ‘ , I am still not over it ! I have seen them for almost two years near that microwave , either before me or after me , never smiling to anyone who is an Indian and not from their Company.
This is just one of many incidents which I can write a book about , I have actually came to the conclusion that we Indians never respect other Indians inside or outside our country .We still live in the mindset of third world countries where the West is still superior to us. Have you ever seen an American or German or British not respecting their fellow country men in a third country. ( The names for these Countries are just for example sake ) Probably you won’t find many examples, but what I have felt and written here I am sure many Indians living abroad can relate to it.
The terms like ‘Arey ye to desi hai ‘ , Leaving the door on the face, bypassing the queue , Just because on the other side is a ‘desi’ and not a European .How easily we take the liberty of breaking the rules and disrespecting the etiquettes with another Indian , Why ? or in other words we do not respect our own self because every other Indian that you see around is a mirror image of you irrespective of what you wear and eat and this is how the rest of the world see us, we are only Indians for them , It doesn’t matter if you wear western clothes or traditional Indian clothes , eat the Indian food or European food, hang out with others Indian or Locals , Speak English with an Indian Accent or British Accent for the rest you are one Entity , one single identity to be referred as Indians and if you are complaining about loopholes of a third world society , we better leave those habits that has still kept us in the third world , Why these double standards ! If you love right to equality , no discrimination based on anything, equal respect of all jobs , practice it with all human beings, start right from yourself and your home first! Once we achieve this , our societies will progress with a big leap, back at home and wherever we are.
