My Walk to HOOI

It was a warm afternoon. I had spent most of the morning watching the second season of The Good Place. Today is my last day in the Netherlands and after almost 14 days of traveling the country, I wanted a day of rest. Rest initially came in the form of lying dormant in the bed all morning, rolling back to the familiar Sunday mornings at home, lounging in front of the TV and watching the YouTube videos of late night comedy shows. At home, we often end up just vegetating out in front of the TV on weekend mornings. It’s a strange way of relaxing but somehow in today’s age of fast paced life, just consuming content without moving a muscle seems to allow you to be awake while being absolutely corpse-like. It’s like meditating except that when you come out of this kind of coma there is a feeling of time lost in nothing-ness. Today started out like one of those days. After binge-watching the entire season of A Good Place on Netflix, I decided to finally shake myself out of the bed and walk to the nearby café, which came recommended from our host and decided to create content for a change, instead of consuming it.

            The shower and the change of clothes were quick. I realized I had left all my clean clothes up for drying in our host’s office, which also served as her living/dining room, and since I knew that she was working there with an intern, I decided to recycle one of the t-shirts from the pile of dirty laundry. Once I had the momentum going, the departure from the house was rather hasty. I quickly picked up my bag, emptied it out of all the redundant items from yesterday’s trip to The Hague and packed up my laptop and charger.

            It was going to be a short 10-minute walk to the café HOOI. I stepped out of the house onto a rather quiet street. It was, after all, 3pm on a Thursday. A quick walk across the houses and I had reached Wilhemina Park. There were quite a few people in the park for this time of the day. The temperature was quite alright and in the shade of the trees, the park seemed rather inviting. Most of the people in the park were sunbathing, an unnecessary pastime in my opinion. As I walked along, I heard the strumming of guitar and spotted three friends quietly playing guitar and softly singing along. Behind them was the statue of Queen Wilhemina, the namesake of the park. She stands tall and heavy, looking over everyone who passes by. Though the park was quiet, it was by no means empty. There was a steady stream of bicyclists riding through the park onto their destinations. That is one of the beautiful things about this town and The Netherlands in general, the town is always bustling with activity, but it always seems quieter than regular places because bicycles don’t create any noise.

            As I exited the park, bushes upon bushes of roses greeted me, sweetly adorning the houses along the park. They came in all colors – yellow, white and pink, smelling heavenly. I continued my walk towards the café through the now increasingly active part of town. It was coffee time for everyone and the foot traffic in the town was picking up. Finally I arrived at my destination, a nice calm place with worktables and cushions for people to work while sipping on their soups or coffee, or enjoying a meal.

            I started off with an order of zucchini-broccoli soup served on a wooden platter with a slice of multi-grained bread. The bread looks nice and airy, on which rests a round slice of butter, looking like a slice of half-boiled egg yolk on a white hollow egg-shaped plate, the size of an ostrich’s egg. The soup smells delicious and hot. It has a streak of cream with a sprinkling of coriander on it. The butter on the bread, though, is the best part of this meal. Absolutely delicious! I intend to follow it up with a slice of quiche and I can already tell by the smell wafting towards me that it will be superb too.

“Everything’s better with some butter”

Why do some countries prosper and others remain in the rut

Having lived in the USA for 7 years, I have often wondered, why we can't have good things in India. I grew up in India and though I led a very sheltered life, I remember taking an auto that is spewing black smoke from my college to the nearest town over a pothole-filled road and getting off next to a garbage dump. In India, there is a saying, "badi fight hai", which loosely translates to "there's too much problem". I've often wondered why everything is so hard in India. All the way from traveling to the shopping center 1 km away to getting a driving license. Small tasks drain you out, as you struggle to deal with the traffic, the dirt, the poor infrastructure, the bribes, the red tape, the people, and the general poor quality of work in a place where it is each man for himself.

On occasions where I have felt gratitude for my life in USA, I have wishfully imagined myself 'fixing' India only to have my plan break apart when I realize that not everyone in India wants to 'fix' their situation. Most folks in India are really struggling to meet their everyday needs. They literally lack the funds, food and other basic necessities to have the time or the leisure to fight for change in their society. But even those who have the basic necessities are truly complacent, longing to just forget about problems and let the system work as it is. There is a huge inertia towards wanting to fix things, along with a dead weight of conviction that things will not change.

There are two qualities, which I think differentiate Indians from Americans and which, in my opinion, determine to a large extent, the better quality of life here. All my rationalization and brain storming has reduced the answer to the title of this article, to these two qualities. They're:

Respect and Ownership

Respect for each other is something which greatly improves life in USA. Respect for one another is deeply embedded in the society here, not just in how you talk to one another, it also determines how much value you believe the other person deserves. Take for example, traffic in India. If we were respectful, we would understand that everyone who's on the road, is trying to get somewhere, and it is as important for them to get to their destination as it is for us to get to ours. This compulsion for Indians to just grab whatever piece of road is available and take it for themselves while cutting off someone else shows how, deep inside, each Indian thinks that they deserve more than others. We don't respect one another. We don't respect our maids, our drivers and other folks who work around us. We don't respect the stranger on the street who is trying to cross the road. We don't the respect the folks who have been waiting at the bus stop longer than us and want to catch the bus just as much as we do. This respect, in USA, shapes the way people behave around each other. Neighbors are able to extrapolate their own desires, to their neighbors, and treat them the way they would like to be treated. So, in USA, you'll see Indians asking strangers if they were waiting in line for the bus, to make sure that the person who got to the bus stop first, got to board the bus first. In USA, even a beggar would ask you for change from a distance and if you refuse, will walk away. The poor have respect for themselves and respect for others, and that changes the way you behave when life throws it's worst at you.

The second differentiating factor is ownership. No change will occur unless you change the governance system. In India, there is an 'us versus them' mentality, where common citizens feel that the ruling class creates laws to control the common folks, which makes the regular citizens sort of involuntary recipients of whatever the government is deciding behind closed doors. There is a disconnect such that people don't want to pay taxes because they have no say in deciding how that money is used. What I believe is lacking, is a sense of ownership among the citizens of India. There is a constant sense of not owning the park in their neighborhood, or the roads to the schools, or the bus transportation system. Indians don't realize that the infrastructure in their neighborhood is something they own as a collective property, and not a gift from the government. They paid for it, from the money earned by their hard work and sweat. When someone throws garbage in your neighborhood, you should feel the same kind of anger that you'd feel if someone throws garbage in your car. If someone steals electricity from the pole in your market, you should feel the same kind of anger as someone stealing electricity from you. Because you paid for that electricity service. We should realize that if the government is constantly losing money over a service, either due to theft or vandalism, they will discontinue it. So it is in your best interest to realize that the infrastructure around you, was put their for you, by your money, by the people whose salaries you are paying, as the taxpayer, and if you don't see the results that you want in your neighborhood, it is up to you to fix it.

When you combine respect with a sense of ownership, that is when the dialog shifts from "this is what I deserve" to "this is what we deserve". With respect, you will realize that it's not just you who owns the system, but your neighbors too. So take that ownership and realize that you must do something about what's around you keeping your neighbors in mind, cause you both will be paying for it anyways. I also believe that once you internalize respect for others, you will be less inclined to take what's not yours or more than you deserve, because for every free meal you pick up, someone else, just like you, goes hungry.

If we started raising our kids with these two values, rather than telling them that life is a race and we can only win by defeating our neighbor, there may be a real change.