Finish First or DIE!

I love observing people from a distance. I do it all the time, almost everywhere. Over time, I noticed something peculiar about a lot of people around me. A principle they subconsciously follow - "Finish First or Die!".

Take a drive on Indian roads and all you see is people desperately overtaking each other like their lives depend on it. Sadly they often risk losing their lives doing this.

Stand in a queue at a railway station and you will see people pushing and shoving at you with no respect for personal space. Not only are they ready to grab an opportunity to jump the line, they live in fear of somebody else doing the same to them.

Gas Stations, Post offices, Banks, Airplanes, heck anywhere, same story. Mr. B can't bear to wait behind A. Instead, B loves waiting next to A. When space clears and A is slow, B will jump at the chance and steal A's position. But the twist is, C, D, E and F are also impatient, so poor Mr. A finds himself pushed back of the line due to a second's hesitation.

There's no compassion, there's no consideration, there's no organization. Only chaos, greed and selfishness. The quest for being numero uno. Why is everything in life a race and where are we learning this concept? Of course, it's School!

Sadly, from a very young age, kids in India are taught to aim to be better than everybody else, not aim to be brilliant individually. Everybody from teachers, to relatives, to parents, to strangers tell us that in life, you've got to be ahead of everyone else.

There was this school bus with a motto proudly printed all over it and it said - "Strive to Surpass". Really? Strive to surpass? It sounds like, as long as you're ahead of the others, you're all good. They just want to keep you ahead of the race, but sadly, only one can finish first. The rest of the hundreds of students will have failed to live up to the motto of the school.

A sad incident that went viral across the world was in Bihar with parents risking their lives to scale the walls of a multi-storeyed school building passing notes through open windows to help their kids cheat and pass the exam. With such experiences, the kids get brain washed into a narrow minded perspective that this is how life is. It's a competition and it's about beating everyone else.

The kids never realize that outside of school, different people run at different speeds and the race of life is not a one-way race. There are millions of directions to choose from. Everybody runs a different race at a different speed. For a certain student, just passing is a major achievement, for another, 98% is not enough. Different goals altogether, yet judged by the same standards.

Kids may not realize this, but parents and schools need to. If the current system of striving to surpass continues, all we will be left with, are students standing in a single file who can recite the entire text book word-to-word but not know the meaning of any of it. I've already come across such people in my life. "This is how you solve it, I don't know why, but this is the right method" - a pretty common sentence you hear in schools and colleges.

Competition is good to an extent as it brings out the best in you. But putting competition ahead of the final goal is going a bit too far. There is a time and place for the ultimate quest in being first and it usually belongs on the racing track or some similar sporting event. But in regular life, there are a lot of things that you can do at the pace you want to. You don't have to beat the others to it.

No medal will be given for getting first off the line at a traffic signal. No award will be given for being the first person from a crowd to get into a train. No cash prize will be given for being the first person to step out of the airplane doors. Arrive at the destination early, but you don't have to arrive first. Do well in the exam, but you don't have to finish first to prove you're good.

Success shouldn't be measured by how many people you beat, but by how many personal challenges you overcame. 

The Rasicm Rant

Ok, this one is quite touchy. The moment it comes to Race, suddenly one wrong word and everything falls apart. But surprisingly that's not how it is in India! Oh yeah, this is a good one!

Recently I overheard an argument that was taking place in my neighbor's house. All I could hear was, "WE DO NOT ALLOW!" When I found out the root cause, I understood. A couple of students from Iran wanted to rent the house. The owner was ok with it, but the rest of the residents in the building were not! And the reason was clear. In the past, a couple of Iranian students had stayed there but they were forced to leave because apparently, petrol was being stolen from bikes in the parking, and the building watchman was "scared" they were going to harm him. There is no evidence of such stuff ever happening, but who would care as long as they have a scapegoat in hand. The building residents conveniently decided that the blame was to be put on the two guys who came from a different country. It was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard in my life.

Taking that past prejudiced opinion into account, they decided that once again, the two guys from a different country will not be allowed to live in this building. Apparently they have made it a rule now for the building residents. But yet again, like my previous rant, there is a much nicer way to put forward such things. You don't just shout at the top of your lungs at a couple of foreign students and ask them to get out without explaining to them why they can't stay there.

Another important point to note was that the apartment owner was ok with it! I don't get what gives the rest of the residents a right to decide who stays in the apartment they don't own! Because of this, the owner got pissed off at being shouted at and yelled back. Just like every other argument, the main topic was forgotten and these "elder, wiser" men just created ruckus early in the morning. I would say even a group of drunk teenagers would behave more sensibly. These were middle aged fully sober men yelling at each other because of a "possible misconduct" that "might possibly" be caused by 2 foreign students. That's one hell of an assumption.

What an experience we gave them. They land in this beautiful country hoping to learn something new, and what do we give them? Racist arguments and prejudiced opinions! I would like to see these building residents try to find a place to live in a different country and narrate the experience to me.

I had experienced student life first hand in Wichita, USA, and guess what, it was amazing! In fact, we had really friendly neighbors despite being warned that it wasn't a good neighborhood. Incidentally, I also happened to make a bunch of friends from Iran, and again guess what, I had the best time hanging out with them! In fact, I had not experienced a single incident of racism in over three years of staying in so-called conservative Kansas, and also traveling out to quite a few states across the US. When I look back at those three years, I actually had friends of different nationalities, ages, genders, religions and races and never felt bias of any form. I truly learned a lot about the world and life itself.

Two years in India, and I experience age bias, gender bias, religion bias, linguistic bias, racial bias, pretty much everything that can tell two people apart. God damn it! What are we living in! People judge you if your nose is shaped differently! Apparently, that's the Indian way! Sadly...

The Language Rant

It's been a year and a half that I've been back in India and yet, our great country still surprises and disgusts me to no end. This time, it's about the language we speak. We all know how many languages are spoken in India. Actually, we don't. It goes into the thousands and many tribal languages are still unknown.

Now my situation is pretty unique. Despite being brought up all my life in Hyderabad, the capital city of a Telugu speaking state, I've spent most of my time speaking in English. I don't mind admitting that I'm more comfortable speaking in English. It's been a thing right from school, and I've continued speaking English with my classmates through college and my also with my telugu-speaking roommates in the US. I occasionally get a surprised look on people's faces when I tell them I'm more comfortable speaking in English, but it never bothered me and it never will. I can understand the surprise factor there. 23 years in Hyderabad, India and not comfortable with Telugu? - yes surprising but not criminal, surely! But when someone steps over the line and orders me to speak in Telugu because I am Telugu, that's when I get royally pissed off!

It started with this old man that turned up at work today and asked for the guy who runs the office. I instinctively replied in english that he wasn't here. This man suddenly gets all offended and asks me, "Do you know Telugu?". I said yes. And then he goes on - "Speak telugu. When you know how to speak telugu, then speak to me in telugu". Was that an order? He didn't stop there. He suddenly felt obliged to ask me what I was working as in the company, and what I had studied prior to this. I barely opened my mouth through all this. I was offended that he wanted to judge me by questioning my academic background.


If someone had a thermometer around, it would have exploded. My blood was boiling. It was more about the way he said it than what he said. It was sheer contempt - like I was a piece of dirty cloth he wanted to throw away. Wow, never before had I come across a person so judgmental that I spoke in a different language despite knowing Telugu.

Yes, I could've spoken back in Telugu, all it needed was a simple polite request. But looking at the way he treated me like I was a traitor to the telugu speaking clan, I felt a rebellious monster rising in me. To hell with his linguistic demands. Last I checked, we live in a free country that speaks thousands of languages. I can speak 3 languages (something almost any mildly educated Indian can do), but I'm good at just one. I speak in the language I'm good at. I put my best effort in making sure the other person understands what I'm saying. Now if the people around me have such a big problem with me not speaking one of their preferred languages, it's their own problem. I never demanded anyone to speak in English to me, I sure as hell don't get offended if they speak back in Telugu or Hindi or even a language i don't know a word of!

So what's with our mentality of not being able to accept anything that's not native? Why the arrogance? What if I had grown up learning only Spanish all my life despite being a Telugu person? And worse, what if I couldn't speak at all?  Would he still judge? If he did, then I don't think he deserves to be human.

 I honestly feel people should calm down with their judgmental thoughts. Even if I keep the telugu speaking part aside, I don't understand why people (especially the elder ones) demand to know what others had "Studied" in their past. Obviously, any answer without the words "computer" "engineering" and "technology", means that the guy is completely worthless. So if I said I had a degree in Puppetry or I had a career that involves Fermentation of Beer, that old man might even get me arrested or something. In my personal experience, I've come to realize that quite a lot of "Educated People" and "Wise Old Men" I've met are actually pretty narrow minded. So if you ask me, I would rather proudly say "I'm Uneducated" despite holding a Bachelors in Aeronautical Engineering and nearly getting a Masters too...