Perceptions

It is very true that different people perceive a situation differently from one another. When I think of this, one incident comes to mind and sadly the subject of that incident was me. This happened when I was on a trip in India. I went there for a holiday with my parents and during the trip we went to visit our relatives in our native village. The problem was I did not want to wear traditional clothes all the while because the weather was so hot. So I decided to slip inside my baggy T-shirt and jeans as I was more comfortable in them.

Then I regretted wearing it because in some places we had to walk to our relatives houses and people along the road were staring at me as if they had never seen a human before. I was irritated by this and I was glad to finally enter into my relative's house but I was wrong. There was this old lady in that house who came up and spoke to me nicely at first but after that asked me why was I wearing like that. She said I am not a European to wear like that and for her wearing like that equals to wearing nothing. I was so so offended.

She was partially deaf and respecting her age I decided to shut my mouth but I was thinking to myself that she must be mad or something to say such a thing. It was a baggy T-shirt and jeans, I was fully covered compared to the saree she was wearing. After that, we went to Bangalore and there it was a different story. People in Bangalore were not bothered what clothes you were wearing because they were far more fashionable and modenized than I was.

Now, I have come to understand that the way the old lady perceived things were traditional because she was born and bred in that village. Till today she has not seen the world and that was her upbringing also, I guess. Hence, her mentality is fixed to perceive things the traditional way. On the other hand, Bangalore is a very modenized city almost like Kuala Lumpur, and thus the people there are more open minded in the way they perceived things.

Posted by : A.Padmassini A/P V.Anand