We have been reading about racial violence against Indian students in Australia. Everyone has been reacting to the government’s inability to solve the problems of Indians abroad. Well, it’s not in Australia alone. When I traveled to Europe, I must say, strangers almost seemed hostile. If you know them personally, they are warm and friendly, otherwise they are cold.
When I was traveling in a train in London, a stranger blocked my way when I was trying to alight from the train. I was worried because the train would stop only for a short while. I had to take his hand off forcefully and run out of the train. He seemed angry and said, “F@#& off”. I wonder what infuriated him! Later, when I thought about it, I thought it must be my brown skin. People told me to not to venture out at night, because it wasn’t safe for us ‘brown skinned’ people. People seemed to link brown skin with terrorism. They also rudely refered to the so called brown skinned people as ‘Pakis’.
Forget about Europe, when I was traveling in a BTS bus in Bangalore, the lady conductor refused to stop the bus at my bus stop and said I should talk to her in the native tongue Kannada, to stop the bus. I have also had bad experience from people in north India, who jointly refer to all south Indians as ‘Madrasis’. The Shiv Sena bashing up north Indians is the other side of the coin.
There is no end to discrimination based on your colour, caste, nationality, state, district, and God knows what would come up next. We are all nomads, we don't really belong anywhere. If only people understood that!
I am sure all of us would have, at some point, suffered coworkers, who would never give up trying to make our lives difficult. I can think of a couple of reasons - inferiority complex, jealousy, and inflated ego.
An ex-colleague of mine deleted my folder conaining all my work files, without leaving any trace. The back up did not include the recent files, leaving me to redo a lot of work. This is actually not that bad. A friend of mine was given wrong address and telephone numbers when she was travelling.
Another one, you can say, the less harmful one, is perhaps someone who makes it a point to inform the boss even if you sneeze in your cabin. Actually, some bosses seem to encourage that. In a company where I worked before, a colleaque was always complaining to the boss about me. I wondered if I should explain my side of the story. Then I decided against it. I thought, to have reached this level, the boss must be an intelligent person. Surely he has an idea about who is capable of what. I thought I should rather concentrate on work rather than give undue importance to some undeserving person. But, I must admit, it hasn't always beeen easy.
There is yet another category. They are the gossip mongers. They always give you information such as who the boss is currently seeing, a colleague getting a huge hike and all kinds of news. As a rule, they have no favourites. They simply latch on to anyone temporarily. The next moment they go back to the opposite camp to vomit all the juicy news.
Sometimes politics totally transforms the office atmosphere. It gets as bad as swimming in crocodile infested waters. Not only that you need to swim, you also need to avoid crocodiles. You'd better be good at both!
We have been reading about racial violence against Indian students in Australia. Everyone has been reacting to the government’s inability to solve the problems of Indians abroad. Well, it’s not in Australia alone. When I traveled to Europe, I must say, strangers almost seemed hostile. If you know them personally, they are warm and friendly, otherwise they are cold.
