On our Society and Culture

A western friend of mine proudly showed me her overcoat. It was well made.She had given the design to a local tailor, who after the initial phase of being difficult, had agreed to stitch the coat for her for Rs. 9, 500(including the cost of the fabric). I check the fabric out and the coat out; while it was well stitched but it would have cost the tailor, max, Rs.4500-5,500. So the tailor had made a cool extra or illegal profit of Rs. 4000-5000. I exclaimed my horror to my friend and told her she had been ripped off(charged exorbitantly) for the coat. I also asked her what made her cough up the amount.She said that the tailor had pleaded with her, beseeched her and told her that he was on critical medicine and he did not have enough money to pay for the medicines and also since she was leaving Kashmir, she wanted to help Kashmiris. I was shocked but not surprised. The tailor in contention is a famous tailor who caters to the elite of Kashmir and makes a sizeable amount of money. Yet, he had no conscientious qualms in cheating and defrauding a well meaning foreigner.This is not an isolated incident; it happens all the time in Kashmir or for that matter the subcontinent. The sad irony is that the tailor would have gloated after the sale about his “tagangari”-roughly translated as “cleverness” in the subcontinental sense). But it is not the “cleverness” of the tailor but rather the generosity and charitable disposition of my friend in contention that made her pay the amount. And, invariably, this is the case with most well meaning Middle Class westerners who visit the less developed places like Kashmir. But people think they are being clever in having “cheated” them. Who, in this case, from a wider moral angle , gets cheated is obvious. But with this behavior and attitude, we not only lose credibility but questions are posed on our integrity. All Kashmiris get tarred with the same brush and in the process; this cheating and fraudulent behavior affects their trade. Will we ever learn?

Whose responsibility are the elderly and vulnerable of our society?

As I was driving to work on 26th January, a wizened and frail elderly woman hailed my car and hitched for a ride. I stopped and helped the elderly woman into my car. She told me she needed to go to Waqoora- a destination after Ganderbal. I could not drop her there but I offered to drop her at Pandach. As I drove, I enquired about her welfare. She sighed and told me that her husband had divorced her because she could not bear him a child. (This had obviously happened years ago but the memory was and hurt was fresh for the woman). I then asked her where she stayed(lived). She said with her sisters and relatives , who from her hesitation in responding to a pointed question , apparently did not treat her too well. Obviously, fate had dealt the woman a cruel hand in terms of not being able to conceive but our social and cultural attitudes had made it harder for her. Now that she was older and more vulnerable, she was at the mercy of her relatives. This made me think: do we, as a society, not owe a duty of care to our vulnerable segments of society-the elderly? And, are not some of our social attitudes insalubrious? Should we not , both at an individual and collective level do something about these ungainly facts?

Inability to say “Sorry”

Be it the traffic mess that we get caught up in the car that whizzes past us rudely or bumper to bumper  “accidents”, or jostling people on pedestrian pathways, or other social interactions which can be defused by a mere apology, we, on the contrary, flare up and enter into arguments-sometimes intense and ungainly ones. Why, the question is, we cant say sorry? I cant answer this definitely but the problem or issue pertains by and large to our fragile egos and our fragile sense of selves. We have not, for various reasons, been able to forge expansive selves that enable us to be either gracious or take a distance and objectively analyze situations; we feel a compelling need to shout, holler and assert ourselves in ungainly and negative idioms. This is something  happens in situations and conditions of a public nature. Our private lives betray a more calm, gracious and generous attitude and approach. Herein lies a paradox- the disconnect between our public and private selves- a point to ponder on and remedy.

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