On Etiquette and Manners

The metric of being good in India is to just talk nicely with everyone.

India is a country of ironies.

My ex-manager said this to me in one of those coffee chats that he loved to have. They were great as long as people agreed with him and listened to him, but a contrarian view wasn’t welcomed. It’s not like he would berate those who did not have the same ideas as him, but the discussion won’t move forward.

I realized this behavior of his long after I left the organization. I also felt that he was practicing exactly what he was preaching on that day.

My ex-manager had stayed in the US for a really long time, where he had to prove himself every day to justify why he was living in that country. That organization has a lot of Indians in their middle and top management based out of the US, and everyone works really hard and really long hours just so that the organization can retain them on their H-1B visas.

Why is it that those employees want to stay in the US and not move back to India?

One of the reasons could be that their kids have already joined school there and a transition in the education system may not be ideal. Another reason could be that they save a lot of money in rupee terms by earning in dollars, which they can send back to India to help their families. However, India has slowly creeped up in terms of pay and I’m pretty sure these employees would be paid really well by Indian standards to for them to live more than comfortably here.

For a lot of these folks, the reason is the comfort and the ease of doing things in the US. Everyone follows the law and the law is the same for all. People follow lane driving and love to have cars which they can use to travel across the country. You get clean air and people who know how to mind their own business. Work is heavily professional, and you don’t get involved in someone’s personal life easily. No one advises you on what is appropriate to do in society and what isn’t. Your parents aren’t there to lecture you about ethics and religion and even if they are, because they live in a foreign land, they have to abide by that country’s rules.

Recently, Delhi was once again engulfed in smoke right around Diwali and the situation hasn’t improved since. It’s not like people in other countries don’t burst firecrackers, but there is a limit to how much or for how long can you do it. There is an inherent respect and dignity of human life there. As for Delhi, it’s overpopulated, so it seems like the government isn’t concerned with a few people falling sick or even dying, especially the elderly and the kids.

As Indians, we want to experience the best that our country has to offer, arguing that we pay our taxes from our hard earned money. And yet, when it comes to our workplace, we have to be told repeatedly to not exploit the benefits provided to us and that disciplinary action, inclusive of termination, can be taken if someone is found guilty of faking reimbursements. We try to avoid difficult conversations at the workplace and are good at passing the buck: putting responsibility on someone else for our work. If you want to talk about hard earned money, you should have a justification for it. But given the opportunity to leave from the office early, we would do it. In the US, people are paid by the hour but because we are paid monthly, we have found ways to trick the system.

When the taxes have been paid and the public benefits and facilities are not available to us, we complain. I can tell you multiple instances of people throwing their household waste in places where there is already a pile of it, perhaps started by one of our ignorant citizens. While s/he was ignorant, we follow that person aimlessly. I completely agree that our money is not being put to good use by the government, but what are we doing to keep our areas clean? I cannot expect any government, whether right or left, to just keep cleaning the mess that create, arguing that it is their responsibility irrespective of our manners and behavior.

Laws are a figment of our imagination. If no one enforces them, they do not exist. I presume that some of the developed countries may have gone through a similar situation with their citizens, but the people learned and now it’s not only about the law but also about morality to some extent. If you don’t want to be inconvenienced, you would not ideally inconvenience others. These moral standards are thrown into a dustbin when you see Indian roads. People don’t understand which lanes are designated to certain kinds of vehicles, and they drive like a constantly recoiling snake. We all are collectively responsible for the traffic as much as our government is because we do not know how to treat other people on the road.

This habit of complaining is a deeply ingrained one, because from the time we are born, our actions are put into question first by our parents, then our friends, and then our colleagues. No one introspects and looks at their own actions, and when confronted, the behavior is considered rude. We can boast as much as we want about India’s diplomacy, but because in the garb of diplomacy we choose not to confront, even at a personal level, we have no option but to suffer. And when the moment comes when we can take the place of those parents/friends/colleagues, we happily do so because other people are our emotional dumpyard.

In hindsight, the one thing that my ex-manager was certainly right about was the fact that this is a country of ironies, and as long as it continues to remain so, the stress and frustration of any sane person will always increase.

I don’t think elders should teach us manners to behave with other people, because half of that problem can be solved if we learn to respect space. When any generation learns that throwing trash on the streets or driving against the direction of traffic is not the right etiquette, and when such standards are established by our families, is when actual manners are had. This leads to everyone, including our relatives, to behave appropriately with each other.

You can force as much tradition on anyone as you want, but if the tradition is causing more harm than good, irrespectively of religion or caste, and not only to oneself but also to others in our society and our community, it should be done away with. Otherwise, we have no right to complain.

Etiquettes dictate to be a good person. Being a good person does not mean that only four walls are able to see that side. It is only someone else who can call you good, not yourself. And the definition of good varies from community to caste to religion to family.

Therefore, the definition of etiquette needs to be re-looked. Be ethical towards others and yourself and many things would fall in place. This needs to be collective movement.

Let’s break the irony and talk in facts.