A couple of months ago, I
attended an open event, where in volunteers could pick any topic of their
choice, and give a talk. There were 36 talks (6 talks going on in parallel) and
no strict subject or format. Perhaps this is a perfect reflection of the open
culture Bangalore is embracing. I too gave a technical talk and was surprised to
see quite a few young students listen with interest, a talk on advance topic in
computer science. And then I attended several non-technical talks. One such
talk was about the presenter’s experience, while living in a very popular US
city. I have always enjoyed listening to people’s experience, and hence went
in, enthusiastically.
The next 45 minutes, was a pure
insult, to an amazing city, to its people, and to the intelligence of the
audience. The talk was based on shallow thoughts, affirmation of stereotypes, and
total ignorance. Among several ludicrous points, I wish to share a few of them,
along with supporting reasons, provided by the speaker.
“XYZ is a great city,
because it experiences four different seasons.” Well, if this is actually what
makes a city great, then most cities I know of, are great. However, one of my
favorite cities in the US, Los Angeles would lose out, as it has summer-like
weather for 9 months and spring-like for the remaining 3. Does having four well
differentiable seasons make a city great?
“XYZ is a great city,
because people can dance in public, yet no one will object to it.” I do not
wish to make a counter argument to such a deprived point.
“What makes XYZ great is
people do their work promptly.” The example the speaker gave here was how she
was moved by seeing a city worker, promptly doing his duty, despite of heavy
rains. To this audience asked, “Did you
offer him any help?” She replied, “No.
Why should I offer any help. It’s his duty, let him do it.” There is one
word that comes to my mind to describe this, “hypocrisy”.
“There
are no restrictions on having fun in XYZ.” Well, from a long
time, I have had no restrictions on having fun, in any part of the world I have
lived. This is a very subjective point and city has got nothing to do with it.
I couldn’t help but use the figure of speech, small town mentality, to describe this reasoning.
“No Indian city has parks,
but XYZ has many.” This was heavily criticized by every single member present. Bangalore
with at least a park a neighborhood
would be in par with most American cities, if not better, in this measure.
Discrediting Indian cities on wrong issues makes no sense.
I have often said that places don’t make people, but people do make
places. Improving your thoughts and actions will do a good deal of service to
any city (state or country) you chose to live in. Uniqueness of city however is
a different subject matter. In the larger context let’s understand a basic theory.
American population to resources ratio is beyond compare to that of India.
Hence the distribution of resources is naturally superior. But glorifying frolicsome points about America
and criticizing some points of India, without comprehending the root cause, is preposterous.
At the end of this talk, I was motivated to give a talk, the next time this
event will be organized, titled, “Busting myths about the US: Why I moved to
India?”
PS: I have not used the name
of the event as well as the city, as it would reveal the identity of the
speaker. I’m not against any city or country, but against shallow thinking and
spreading of stereotypes. I have a first had experience of the city (visited
four times) which the central theme of this talk. This city has so much to talk
about that 45 minutes would not do justice to the greatness of this city.
