What is it with people nowadays? Why have a large proportion of our society suddenly resorted to rudeness as a necessary ingredient, in the messy concoctions of their daily lives? Niceness, ofcourse was pushed out from the recipe a long time back , but if downright rudeness is to be used in such huge quantities, then, I think (though I am no cook) that it shall certainly spoil the broth, even though there may not be too many cooks to aid in the process.My mother who has been teaching for 20-something years in a reputed college in kolkata ,recently had the misfortune of going to a Govt. center which handles the educational affairs of the state, for some work. Work,however seemed to be the only activity which the staff didn’t believe in. Some people had already left even though it wasn’t yet 2pm, some were busy gossiping, and the rest hadn’t bothered to come at all. My mother did the necessary running from pillar to post and after repeated rounds, she was finally led to the head clerk (read: the king of the nazguls) , who was under a huge misconcenception that he was the most important person in the whole wide world. Anyway, she went upto him and asked him to retrieve her file which has all the details. Woe betide her, that she also happened to use the word ‘please’, in her request !! As soon as he heard ‘please’, the man promptly got up enraged and said,“ aapni amake ‘please’ kano bolchen?” ; (why are you saying ‘please?’).Whatever reply my mother was expecting, she certainly wasn’t expecting this. Perhaps, she expected him to stage a walk-out ( they have been known to do this at the drop of a hat, ofcourse, and I expect, write of it with glowing pride in their resumes) or maybe she expected him to throw tantrums, but I can say it with certainty that she did NOT expect him to protest against her using polite language!!……………………………My mother was flabbergasted……………….. (Which I might add, I quite an achievement on the man’s part.) She could only meekly reply,“ ‘Please’ to kono kharab katha nei” ; ( please isn’t a bad word…)Imagine explaining THAT to someone!I know it sounds incredulous but it really happened. I only wish I knew what he thought ‘please’ meant so that I could send him anonymous letters in which every second word would be, you guessed it right, ‘please’!!Mom, ofcourse couldn’t get any work done that day and has to go again next week.God help her.But that happened in a Govt. center and those places have a reputation of harbouring people who have a long standing tradition to think of before behaving politely or getting any work done. Consider this, now.I was supposed to submit a term paper today, which I did. I had quoted from an essay which had been photocopied and circulated in class by a professor, and consequently did not have the bibliographical details pertaining to that essay. I could just cite the name of the essay and its author in my paper but conventions have to be followed and so, I vainly tried searching the Net and the Digital Library network to locate the book for more than two hours. It didn’t work. Just after that I met a friend and told him about the problem. He recommended searching the net, to which I said that I had and that I hadn’t found it. His reaction was –“Impossible!! Give me the name of the author, I’ll do it!!”To which I said, “Great! Do it now!”And he said, “Now? Why would I be bothered to do it now?”So I said, “Oh! So you only want to show that you can do it, not help me out?!”.And he said, “Duh!!”.And promptly started talking to another friend who was standing by.So you see, niceness is out. Rudeness is in. The couple of instances that I have given, are personal instances because I know they happened and are in no way hearsay. But there are many other incidents which I have seen or heard of in which people have behaved very rudely, and for apparently no reason at all.Why do they feel such a compelling need to be rude? To show that they can afford to be rude? Or perhaps they feel that being rude is wielding power and that niceness is weakness? Or do they confuse rudeness with wit? Or do they have a totally inverted sense of what’s rude and what’s not? To the unimaginable extent that they think ‘please’ is a rude word ?!Whatever the reason, it is happening. And I wish it wouldn’t. It really doesn’t take much to be nice or polite or to help someone out. Just a smile, or a few kind words. And I don’t think that’s too difficult, is it?
# posted by zish @ 6:23 AM 4 comments
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