I was sitting quietly, having lunch one day. Across the table sat two “educated” gentlemen having a casual conversation. One said he had no cook because the last one had suddenly demanded too high a salary, so he had to let him go.
The other added, “You know these people are very clever, they know exactly how to extract money out of us.” Then he went on to relate the story of various domestic employees he had had in the last several months, including one who had become “too big for his boots”, resulting in his dismissal.
The conversation went on in this vein, invariably he referred to domestic help as “these people.” The whole thing seemed particularly bizarre to me. First, the dark ages of the British Raj flashed in front of my eyes — ‘No Indians and dogs allowed’ written above the door of a restaurant, then the thought of so many millions of people stricken with poverty being classed as simply “these people.”
First, I doubt any person with a sensibility beyond barbarism can say that any two people in the world are the same, let alone more than 80 per cent of the population of Pakistan. Secondly, if you are poor and your children are hungry, you may just be forced to become demanding in order to feed your family, you may also be prey to a certain degree of irritability. Wouldn’t you be?
Just think, you could “possibly” also become cranky and rude if you feel downtrodden and helpless most of your life, constantly having to prove to the world that you, too, have a mind of your own and that you really don’t want to be pitied or alternatively abused. You have the same dignity that is allowed to your employers, and yet it is disrespected time and time again. “These people” deserve some credit for being human beings. The fault here lies not entirely with the two individuals having the conversation at lunch, but with our entire society which condones this kind of generalization.
Thus, before we have even started to try and tackle the problems of equal rights for the poor and the rich — along with the umpteen other issues that are of serious concern for us today and for our future generations — we have negated everything simply by the way we “talk”. We cannot do one thing and say another. It means that we do not feel passionately about what we are doing, and if we do not feel passionately about our actions, how can we succeed at improving the conditions of our society?
What is the message we are conveying to our future generations, what will our children learn if we ourselves are so constrained by our concepts that we can’t move in a positive direction. My point ultimately being that we cannot refer to human beings in such vague categories, where we diminish all respect for individuality because it leads to actions that take away human dignity and respect. Everyone is truly unique, if only we could see them as such. This is not just a matter of language, it is a question of concepts.
If we do not learn to recognize individuals as entities in their own right, we will fail to bring about a balanced and secure society. The poor will never have the same rights as the rich; same is the case with men and women, young and old. Even people from different provinces in our own country will continue to discriminate against each other. I am not talking of a utopian society, these are basic rights that should be endowed on every human beings irrespective of race, creed, colour, religion or background.
When the nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I doubt anyone was aware of colour, race or religion. We live in an unpredictable world where natural disasters occur everyday, let us not make it any worse for each other. And it begins with the way we communicate. Unless we revise our concepts, our language will continue to translate the wrong message, leading to unjust actions and grave consequences.
I was sitting quietly, having lunch one day. Across the table sat two “educated” gentlemen having a casual conversation. One said he had no cook because the last one had suddenly demanded too high a salary, so he had to let him go.
