Irrespective of how old or how young one is, we have always something to learn from nature or from our fellow beings. Often, we need to even learn from our own children. Age does give us experience, but not always wisdom. The more we are open to listening and to correction, the more we learn. In religious parlance, we have often heard of “brotherly correction”, which we rarely venture into, no matter how much we wish to, solely because it may hurt the ego of the person we are trying to correct.
These thoughts came to me, as I visited Sri Lanka, early this week, for the canonization of our own Fr. Joseph Vaz. The country has much to teach us and perhaps the Singalese too have some to learn from us. But since I am writing for my people, I will concentrate on the former. The island is much cleaner than even our small Goa, where we have not even been able to take care of our own garbage till date. I could not see mounds of garbage anywhere, which means that they know how and where to treat it. But what struck me the most was the discipline on the roads, the courteousness of the motorists, the politeness of the people at shops, restaurants, offices, etc. and above all the honesty of rickshaw and taxi drivers. And while I was happy that I had encountered such lovely people, a sense of pain and anguish overtook me as I wondered why can’t we emulate their example.
Sri Lanka is like India, a third World developing country. We live just next door, we had the same rulers and many of their inhabitants have the same origin or roots, yet we are so different. Why? Perhaps we even have a superiority complex and often look down upon Sri Lanka and we think that they need to learn much from us on the development front and that we have nothing much to learn from them. Surely, we are wrong. Certainly, in technology, science and many other fields, we are far more advanced. We have perhaps much more talent and potential. But we have also much more corruption and far more dishonesty. Except for Pakistan and may be a few small countries, we have the least respect for human life. No doubt, we have a big population. But we do not wish to solve or even minimize it because it suits us. We thrive on the poverty, illiteracy and excess population for it helps us to attain power and through power accumulate illicit wealth. Jairam Ramesh has already given India a Nobel Prize for filth; we may add for corruption too.
The pedestrian deserves the highest respect on the roads in almost every country in the world, but not so in India and perhaps least of all in our small Goa, where we take pride of a special culture, which, of late seems to be more of arrogance and least regard for others. But it did surprise me that in neighbouring and small Sri Lanka, the motorist treats the pedestrian with utmost respect and concern, stopping his vehicle at least 5 metres away from him, even if he happens to cross the road outside the pedestrian line. In offices, shops and restaurants, people show extreme courtesy, unlike even in Goa where, particularly in government offices, you are often frowned at, the very moment you enter. Rickshaw and taxi drivers do not cheat. They do make genuine mistakes when not knowing the destination and make special efforts to find the correct address, but surely they don’t take you for a ride or for a city ”dharshan” as it generally happens in most of Indian cities.
In Goa, they do it differently by quoting exhorbitant rates that put you off and by never using the meter in open connivance with the government, which needs their votes. There is overall discipline prevailing everywhere, with vehicles obeying traffic laws and people adhering to queues, being helpful and extremely polite. One occasion where this was very evident was at the Pope’s arrival and particularly at the canonization venue, where the police and volunteers handled over half a million people with utmost respect and courtesy, with no harsh words or arguments witnessed. I wonder whether in Goa we would be able to handle even a quarter of that crowd. The police in Goa cannot even handle minor accidents which are becoming common and result in huge traffic jams. That a catholic event of that magnitude received such tremendous support from a predominantly Buddhist country, which even declared the day a public holiday, is something that the BJP government needs surely to learn.
There are certainly a few drawbacks. Mobile network appears to be deficient or at least that was my experience and of a few others. One feels that the use of English language is limited and people are not much conversant with that language. The reasons given by a few people I met were that this was the result of the government neglecting English and overemphasizing on the use of local language. This has seriously affected tourism, they say. But unlike I witnessed in Chennai, name boards are also written in English or roman script. These are lessons for us. While it is of utmost importance that we read, write and promote our local language it is equally essential to know English. Goa has been a preferred destination for various reasons but importantly because people are well conversant with English.
I thought I would pen a few fond memories of a very short but extremely pleasant stay in Colombo. If we, in Goa, share a few of the qualities I witnessed in the Singalese, there is surely much that we need to learn from them and that we seem to have lost in the last few decades. I refer particularly to our attitudes towards others in our offices, business places, etc and the courtesies we need to show to our fellowmen everywhere and particularly on the roads. Above all, let us cultivate honesty, for which we were well known and are still known to some extent. This will take us a long way to make Goa and India a better place to live in.
(The author is a retired banker)
