You always know that a country cannot have 100%
civilized people. But you do expect it from people who are intelligent and
educated. When I initially moved to Mumbai, I was in a notion that being a
metro and a hub for working people, the crowd consists of majority of educated
people, hence would be civilized. And I did experience it in the coming few
months. I used to think that Mumbai lot is way better than Indore. But the
bubble broke a few months ago, and in a series of unpleasant incidents.
Not one but quite a few incidents took place, which
made me change my perception about this city. Being a vast city, the mode of
transport taken by majority of people is the public transport like buses and
local trains. Now there is a system in the buses that the first few rows of
buses are reserved for women travelers. If there are women passengers on the
bus, they have the right to sit on those seats, and also have the right to make
the men get up from their seat if they are seated there during the journey and
get seated themselves.
So, I got accustomed to this norm when I travelled a
few times in the bus. Now here is where for the first time the bubble broke.
There was this guy, in his 30’s something, and he was a working executive, as
he had a strap around him mentioning that he worked for some IT company. He was
seated in the “women” seat, and I was seated right behind him. The bus was not
crowded, but every seat was occupied. At a stop, few passengers boarded the
bus, out of which 2 were females. One of them being around 50’s something. She
went up to the guy and asked him to get up so that she could be seated. To my
disbelief, he not remained seated, but told the lady that if she kept standing
for 5 minutes, her legs won’t get tired. The old lady was shocked as this was a
right given by the government to her. It was only after the conductor came into
the conversation and told the guy to get up, did he get up, but not silently.
He kept murmuring something in Marathi, which m sure was not good at all.
I was amused, as this norm was practiced everywhere,
and people followed. I was amazed to see such a reaction for the first time.
The second one came really fast. I went to see a
movie, and this multiplex chain had the tradition of having the national anthem
being played at the start of the movie. I was surprised to see that people not
respecting their own national anthem. People during the anthem being played
were playing with their cell phones, eating popcorn, adjusting their seats. In
short doing all everything but paying attention to the anthem. And there were
not just one or two, but close to 8-10 people in the audience doing that. Can’t
we give due attention to our own anthem, which hardly takes up 2 minutes of
one’s time. And they included few senior citizens and women.
I will just illustrate one more. If you are
travelling distance too great, then train is the best medium to travel. So when
you reach the station, you will find many beggars on and around the stairs.
Here I saw one educated lady, who seemed to be decent and civilized on the
outside, did such a horrible thing that made me despise her. While the beggar was
doing his ‘job’, this lady actually kicked the beggar. Just because his hand at
mistakenly touched the lady’s leg. She kicked him so hard that he was shocked
and in pain. And then she screamed at him, and said something in Marathi, which
I dint understand, but got a feeling that it was abusive.
Why m writing this as a post, just to make people
aware that though Mumbai maybe called the city that fulfills your dreams, and
people believe that educated lot is the highest here, the mannerisms and
civilized nature is not at its best. And these incidents came out from the
people who are thought and behave to be civilized.
To be known as the India’s favorite city, I’m upset
that there may be so many of such incidents happening every day, and this makes
me lose the faith I had in this city.
