I set out to organize things for tomorrow’s Syntel recruitment test. I had to shop for a pair of shoes for my formal attire, so I took a ride on my bicycle to the shoe shops center. I bought one pair, held it half to the right side of the handle, and half holding with my two fingers headed peddling back in the same route. I stopped at the general store to buy some of my homely needs.
I went into the shop asked for things I wanted and stood in a line for checkout. An elderly man wearing a khaddar dhoti and a white shirt was arguing with the shop owner, the biller himself. The shop owner is not actually caring for what the man was telling. I paid attention to that man. He was trying to convince the shop owner that the umbrella he bought on the last day was actually broken and so he bought it back for a new one. Everyone else is going through that checkout counter but him. I was one of them.
The incident that happened in the shop occupied my mind on my ride back home. I started to think upon this pointed from the wonderful cultural history of India.
“Since the far past, the culture of India taught us many things regarding culture and traditions. People used to wear their pride in their clothing. People respect people with fine attire. The respect comes with the way they keep up their outfit. People wearing khaddar dhoti and a white shirt were considered dignities of the village.
These days are very cruel. People only respect people with money. The khaddar dhoti’s dignity was quite dead there in the general store. Maybe this is not development what we sought all these years.”
I almost peddled halfway to home thinking this, my pity thoughts about the elderly man were distracted with my front wheel rolling over a giant stone. I was startled and picked up my attention over the road I was riding through.
“Touch screen watches! Touch screen watches!”, a road seller’s voice caught my attention. I smelt something from the recipe my mind was cooking.
“Touch screen watches are being sold on the roadside too, but why Samsung named it Galaxy Gear? It’s not about features at all, it about the reputation. It comes in the same way it is made by.”
Later I realized that dignity won’t come up with an outfit, it comes with the attitude towards we live with. Disrespecting people who wear good clothing may not be a development we are seeking, it is a lot more than that. It is evolution. History taught me to live smarter every day. That’s what people doing. That’s how they are shielding their pride with an umbrella in the name of evolution!
Happy living!