Odd City People

I spent most of last year in hotel rooms and airports. The year before, I thought that the measure of success in my profession is to wear expensive shirts, shoes and watches. So I spent most of my time lobbying the boss to get me on a big job so that I could wear exactly what I thought fancy people wore. A big job meant a lot of things at the time. Among other things, it meant an all-expenses paid trip and accommodation in five-star apartments smack bang in the middle all major cities. To think that my entire decision was based on such superficial observations disappoints me. More than that, it tears me from the inside every time I think about what I had to go through while wearing expensive shirts, shoes and watches.

What I didn't care to think about at the time was how this trip would change something in me that will take a long time to restore. Cliches like selling my soul to the devil or losing faith in humanity might hit the nail on the head here. But to leave it at that is to leave untouched something that I have been bottling up for the past seven or eight months. While I saw how people in these cities lived, what they did and how they went about their day, I couldn't imagine being one of them. Not only that, I just couldn't bring myself to know anyone beyond small-talk. By the forth month of living out of a suitcase, it became clear to me that no one knew anyone beyond small-talk. In fact, some of them considered others who they small-talked with as best of friends. Right now, I can't remember a single person who I made small-talk with, and it wouldn't bother me much if I never saw them again. To me, it appeared that everyone I came across shared this thought. The fact that I found others who were far more advanced in their carelessness towards others was a scary experience. It was even more disturbing that everyone seemed to be on a default asshole mode. The decision to treat anyone else with respect was a calculated one. What am I going to get out of it if I treat this stranger nicely? If there are no reprecussions of my treatment of this stranger, then I'm going to be an asshole. I'm going to be an asshole to this person unless someone proves to me that he is important and has important connections. These were the kinds of decisions that did more harm than good to me throughout most of last year.

What bothers me the most is that I sold out. I became one of them. I too started measuring people based on their worth. In most cases this worth was calculated based on a person's wealth and connection to big wigs in big companies. It eventually dawned upon me that in the eyes of others, and based on the factors I judged people by, I was worthless. For one, I was one of the few non-Caucasians who worked in the firm. So a judging person would surely come to the conclusion that I was rich, but had no connections to big wigs in big companies. That person would quickly revisit their initial conclusion by asking the question, 'If he's so rich, then why on earth is he here?' Then they would conclude with certainty that I was worthless.

Having black hair, dark brown eyes, and olive skin is not something that wins you points in this game. If you're female, everyone wants to score you so that they could tell their friends that they penetrated what is considered unpenetratable. If you're male, well, you're a target for racists and violent low-lives.

How do you win people over when everyone who looks like you in this country is either a gangster, a religious fundementalist, a rich Saudi brat, or a low-life crook? How do you win over people when the bad people in the news look like you? How do you win over people when the guy screaming 'Allah Akbar' threatening to bring hell to the West shares your language and heritage? The answer after a year of painful social observations on my behalf, is that you can't. It took ages for the Greeks, Italians, and Asians to be accepted here, so I don't expect Middle Easterners or Africans to be welcome with open arms anywhere here anytime soon. This lack of acceptance will remain in place as long as Murdoch and Packer own 90% of Australian media.

Come to think of it. My Australian-cities tour coincided with the spike in racial attacks on Indians in Melbourne. You would think that by being in a fancy schmancy firm that one would be surrounded by smart people who could see the bias in the media and reject it. This unfortunately wasn't the case. The racial slurs against Indians in the workplace seemed to get more frequent. On another note, having dealt with over a few hundred people over the course of my trip, how was I to differentiate the rude people from the racist ones? Surely it's possible that a racist prick who is aware of the taboo associated with racism would treat poorly people from different backgrounds and use another excuse to cover the real racist inside. I have no doubt in my mind that I came across a few of these people.