An Individual in a Community
This can be a highly debatable topic but I’m just trying to put down what I experienced today.
This morning when I took a rickshaw to my college, the driver called me ‘didi’ (used to address an elder sister in Hindi) even though he was elder to me by many years. He asked me from which way I wanted to go and politely agreed to the way I told him. He stopped the rickshaw in the middle of road and made other vehicles stop too just because an old lady wanted to cross the road. Seeing him stopping vehicles, others helped the lady reach the other side of the road. On reaching the destination and after I paid for the fare, I usually thank the driver, but before I could thank him, he thanked me. I was overwhelmed by the response I got because this is something we do not see daily.
On the contrary, while coming back home, a lady sat across to me in the train who was talking on the phone. I know, it is morally inappropriate to listen to anyone’s conversation but her decibel level was pretty high to mute her. After ending her call on which she was probably talking about cracking a business deal by hook or crook, she initiated another call in which she initially complained about a lot of things in a relatively calm way. To ignore her, I shut my eyes and tried to sleep when she suddenly decided to shout loudly on the phone attracting glares from people. Nevertheless, she didn’t budge a little. Not only this, but she even used profanities which can be certainly avoided.
The point of writing these two incidents together is they belonged to the same community. The same community the world has been talking about in recent days. The same community having two different individuals and personalities of different genders. My point is, not everyone belonging to a particular community will be the same. No two individuals belonging to the same community will behave in a similar pattern. It’s the mentality, personality, psychology and thinking of the person who makes him the kind of individual she/he is today. One may be extremely good and the other extremely opposite of him.
Moreover, one individual cannot decide how a whole community is and what impact it can cause to the world. It’s not about only a single community we are talking about here, it’s about that one individual too, who thinks that he has got the calculations right about the community. No doubt there are certain individuals who do not have all the good ideas for the world, but we cannot just raise a finger at the whole community, can we?
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