The people who dwell beneath our faces

The credit for this entry goes to my sister, who actually thought of this. Since this seemed like a pretty nice topic to write on, here goes.

Me and my sis were discussing all the differences between USA and India, things that we've noticed in our brief stay here. There was one thing we agreed upon, the bordering-on-weird insistence of people to say thanks for everything. I mean, if someone is especially nice or something, then it makes sense, but saying it all the time doesn't make much sense. It reduces the sentiment to a mere polite necessity, something people must follow. Not that I'm against politeness, I've experienced my share of unpleasantness back in Delhi, something that any other delhiite will attest to, we're not the most polite lot. To tell you frankly, atleast initially, the politeness and thank you's seemed very nice, they were a breath of fresh air. Even the things like cars stopping for you when you cross the road, in India, that's a death wish :) . But then came Thanksgiving, ooh and how that changed things.

To people who're not familiar with what I'm talking about, Thanksgiving here, is like the mother of all sales, once you set aside the obvious festive stuff, which I'm not too clear about. The so called "Black friday" is like a huge event the whole country gears up for, and sales announcements go out months in advance. At first I thought, ok, so it's a sale, so what. I didn't pay much attention to all the stories about people camping outside stores days in advance. Then came friday. Not feeling too enthused to camp outside anywhere in the kind of weather New York, we left at 11 in the morning, and made a customary stop at Walmart. The signs were there, the usually empty parking lot, was choc-a-bloc full. There were masses of people around, and I found myself thinking, this feels more like home, well, chandni chowk atleast. The differences were clearly apparent, no cars stopped for people, no one said thank you, or anything like that. People were even downright rude, honking incessantly, the likes of which you wouldn't face in Delhi even. That confirmed something that had crept into my mind over the past few days. That the politeness that people present, is well, a sham. no one really feels it, but people still project that smiling face and talk politely.

The inherent fakeness of the whole business is kind of shocking. People from the west repeatedly criticize people of the east for being impolite, which is not all false, but still. It probably is still better than faking it, that's something I probably I hate the most. And that slowly tied itself to a lot of other things in my head. The first, and seemingly obvious thing is to tie it to the declining birth rates in the west. Ok, don't laugh and fall over just yet. Everyone knows about the issue, and it seems like a simple logical step. No one would ever want to marry someone without knowing that person from the inside (I mean the personality perverts). That would be a herculean task if that required first tunneling through a mountain of enforced politeness. It simply would take some serious thinking to be sure that what the other person is doing for you is actually real, or if it's a front. I remember what my father says, being an avid, and pretty good photographer, that the best shots are captured when you don't pose. True beauty lies in the moment, and in that impromptu, unrehearsed action. After seeing a lot of the photos, it's kinda hard to deny it. That brings another thought to mind, whether the unrelenting march towards "civility" is actually as good as it's touted. Ok, not killing each other is fine, but being polite all the time is stretching it. Because, forcing people to be polite doesn't change them, it just pushes that inherent malice deeper inside layers of jargon. If the many thousands of years of "civilised" existence have shown, this malice can never be rooted out of people. Which kind of explains the reason why civilizations at the pinnacle of their existence die out, human society simply cannot withstand the barrage of sophistication.

To clarify a bit, I'm a bit partial against all the sophistication. I mean who hasn't seen a scene in a movie where no one knows what all the forks are for! To put it simply, having too much sophistication really kills the fun, so lighten up, and try to not be so stiflingly polite :P