You think you know a lot, you pride in your wisdom and find satisfaction in your kindness. Everyone does that, especially those who are in some kind of privileged or better-off positions in life. You tend to look towards the people who provide you blue collar services like your janitor, your neighborhood launderer or the small-scale green-grocer from the local market with a notion of privilege and entitlement you think is your birthright. And one of these days, one of these guys surprise you with wisdom so deep and kindness so profound you remember that your privilege is but just the reflection of where you were born more than what you did as these folks also do their fair share of hard work, maybe even more than you do. Yes, you deserve your share of privileges – you put in a lot of effort to achieve what you have, but that does not take away the fact that wisdom and kindness do not come as a free gift with your achievements in life.

Yesterday was one such day when I heard and learned a few things, more like stories of experiences which made me rethink about our social structures and our understanding of who is cultured and who is crass.

All my readers first need to understand how things are in my part of the world which is Kolkata, India. Nothing I say below is a reflection on people from similar walks of life in other places and countries. It’s just about how things are here in Kolkata – the largest metropolis in eastern India, often called the City of Joy.

India, as many of you may know, is called the sub-continent because it’s more like the continent of Europe with many peoples, religions, and languages. British historian Vincent Arthur Smith had remarked,

“India is a land of diversity underlying which there flows the spirit of unity”.

Culturally it’s the same country all across the land until it’s not if you understand what I mean. The many peoples and places of India, they are similar yet different. Free movement of people in search of economic opportunities has made the big Indian cities very diverse and cosmopolitan.

Many people from Bihar and other hinterland states flock to Kolkata in search of livelihood. The historical economic and educational backwardness of the state of Bihar since the British colonial times has resulted in a huge influx of blue-collar job-seekers from Bihar to Kolkata and the other big cities. Biharis are inherently a very hard working people, their capacity for hard work is exemplary. Their large-scale migration to the metros has created a growing intolerance from the local residents. While the agitation against Biharis in Mumbai has been in some cases extreme and in defiance of the guarantees instituted in the Constitution of India, Kolkata has not seen such political mobilization against Biharis but there is that notion of cultural, educational and economic superiority among some sections of Bengalis (residents of the state of Bengal of which Kolkata is the capital).

I offered such a background set-up to provide a backstory and socio-economic settings which drive the story in the next couple of paragraphs. This story is about a Bihari driver, it's not really a story but a couple of experiences this driver shared with me which got me thinking; thinking about privileges, culture, racism and racial superiority complex.

I took an Ola cab (an Uber rival in India) to office yesterday and was picked up by a Bihari driver. I have this habit of picking up conversations with cab drivers sometimes as I like to hear their stories, how they live, how hard they work. Today was my lucky day as the driver turned out to be very friendly.

I am not naming him because I did not seek permission from him and do not want to infringe on his privacy without permission.

He started telling me stories about how he and his elder brother worked from 8 in the morning till 12 or 1 am at night, day in and day out for years to earn their family a decent living. You have to remember that these people are peasants and farmers from villages and they had to migrate to the city to support their family - to educate not only their children but their extended families. They sponsored the education of their nephew who is now a Ph.D. A Ph.D. student who was given an education by almost illiterate cab drivers - that's a story to tell. A story which would inspire people.

He started talking about his experiences while driving cabs. I will talk about a couple of his experiences and his thoughts about those situations. Hope these incidents will make cab passengers treat their drivers and co-passengers with dignity and kindness.

Incident 1: A Case of Kindness

One day our driver got an Ola Share passenger (an Ola product where you can book one or two seats and share the cab with other fellow passengers). This passenger was in a hurry as he had to catch a long-distance train. Usual wisdom is not to book a share-cab in case of urgency as route changes and pickup-drops for co-passengers delay your drop time, however, practical experience often forces people to go for a share-cab even in such cases as dedicated cabs can sometimes become hard to get. For the passenger #1 in this story, it was one of those days when he was in an extreme hurry but was forced to book a share-cab because nothing else was available.

Now enters the second booking by passenger #2. Turned out that the booking was quite a distance away and would easily add 30 minutes to the trip and jeopardize passenger #1's tight schedule. Our driver called passenger #2 and explained the situation to him and requested him to cancel this booking and go for a new one as it would help passenger #1 at no cost to passenger #2 as it was well within the time when no cancellation charge is deducted. Passenger #2 was not ok with this request for help and started to speak rudely with the driver, he made it clear he didn't care about what inconvenience it caused passenger #1. After a few more exchanges and a couple of more requests by the driver which was naturally to no avail, the driver said he will himself cancel the trip even if has to pay from his pocket as one passenger was already with him and it was his duty to serve him and not put him into such inconvenience and possible risk of missing the train. He canceled passenger #2's booking and drove away not bothering about his income or possible negative rating.

By process and Ola terms of service, passenger #2 was right and was supposed to get the pickup, but what about humanity, what about showing some kindness and help a fellow human being? A poor and uneducated driver had it in him to see the value of helping someone; while the other guy who is someone like me and you did not have that decency.

Makes you think, doesn't it? It makes you question the value of modern education, of what it teaches us or makes us.

Incident 2: A Case of Racism

On another occasion, when he had just started driving the car he is driving now, he did not have the right idea of how much mileage his car gives and ended up running out of fuel with a passenger on board. He explained it to the passenger about the situation and offered to arrange a separate car for him at no extra cost. The passenger got agitated and did not believe the driver. Even after multiple attempts at trying to explain the situation by the driver, the passenger started calling him a cheat and at one point in time, he remarked that the driver was a cheat and was similar to all other uneducated cheats from Bihar.

This is where my background setting comes into the story. Indian's are not usually thought about to be a racist people. Indians are casteists, yes but they are brown skinned - how can they be racists? That's as naïve as it can be. We are as racist as anyone and we are at our racist worst when it comes to fellow Indians from other states and languages. There is a huge north-south divide between north and south India and among all the individual linguistic states and groups have their own superiority complex.

This second incident with the driver is the result of such racial motivations and the socio-economic forces which influence the movement of people and money.

Have we today become so full of ourselves that we don't see these things; that we don't want to help fellow human beings; that race and social status has become more important than a person and your behavior towards him?

These are the questions which came to my mind as I got off the cab and entered my office to start my day's work. That's when I thought about writing a post on this. Hope this long post makes some of you think and reconsider in case you have any such biases.

This post is already long enough and I just wish to end it with this recital of hope:

Recital of Hope

I hope we are able to build a community and society on the Steem blockchain which is free from such biases and hatred, where a person is judged by her deeds and not by her race, religion, gender or anything else which she has no control upon.