When I was young I head a story which went like this –
A sage was travelling through the forest on his horse, and he saw another group of sages and stopped to meet them. Our sage was in for a great shock, as the people he stopped to meet were dacoits dressed as sages!
The dacoits robed the sage of everything he had. When the dacoits were leaving the sage requested the dacoits to not tell anyone what they had done. On hearing this the dacoits started to laugh, but the leader of the dacoits asked the sage why he had such an unusual request.
To this the sage replied “I don’t want people to lose faith in sages and be afraid of sages in general”.
Now you’re probably wondering why I’m narrating this story. Well its because of a very sad incident.
A few days ago I was getting in to the elevator, and it was rush hour, lots of people entered on the ground floor. When the elevator arrived it already had a few people, including 3 Americans, everyone just poured in and it got over crowded and was over weight!
No one was ready to get off, while everyone was waiting a few people made some silly juvenile remarks not directly aimed at the Americas but just very irritating remarks / gestures that made them feel unwelcome, and the three of them got off the elevator along with me. While getting off one of them said “we were here first”. While all this was going, some stupid people even ‘celebrated’ as the 3 Americans got off. These are people who work in MNCs , the sort who you would expect such stuff from.
I felt really bad about what had just happen, and just because of a handful of VERY STUPID juvenile people now the American tourists / visitors would think all Indians are like this – even think were extremely racist. I can’t even blame them, I opened my mouth to apologise/ explain but the lady asked me not too. That’s when the above story came to my mind.
I was very pissed. All of us aren’t like this.
