Colour Matters?: The Truth That No One Wants to See

worthwhile.

Connect

Sid: ‘Mom, there’s this new boy, this term, in school; Jae-Bong from Korea, and he hardly talks! It’s so hard to figure him out. My teacher wants me to be his buddy, but I don’t know what to do with him!’

Avni (interrupting): ‘Hey, he is new Sid, he may not be very comfortable with English yet, so go learn Korean!’

Mom: ‘Hey, both of you! He is new to the school and the country. Sid, have you asked him how he is feeling? What does he like about being here and what does he find tough? If he doesn’t talk, ask again!’

Sid (nodding his head): ‘Well for that he needs to talk! I can try Mom, but why is it so difficult?!’

Mom: ‘We all have to try and connect. The outcome is less important than the effort. He is away from home, away from his old friends, and he has to learn how a new place works. Remember how you felt when you returned to India from the UK?’

Sid: ‘Well! Now that you say it, it was a bit weird. I recall a boy making fun of the way I spoke. The whole school seemed like an alien territory, and I was lost and scared. I just wanted to run back to London.’

Mom: ‘Hmmm, so now you know what Jae-Bong may be going through!’

Sid: ‘I think he is better behaved than I was. I can put myself in his shoes and feel the pain. I’ll talk to him tomorrow and take him out for a game of football. Let’s see if that works.’

Mom: ‘Sounds good, Sid. Perhaps cricket might help too, since he’s in India now!’

Today, Jae-Bong and Sid are great friends. Jae-Bong loves ‘butter chicken’ and parantha and Sid can have Korean for any meal! Magic happened.

True ‘connect’ is a state when a mere exchange of ideas, messaging and learning moves into a higher state of mutual understanding and deeper acceptance. Connect is an essential ingredient that helps us navigate through the cultural alleys and bridge any differences in ethnicity, race or religion. We are born with family ties, but the bonds of friendship that we create reflect our innate longing to extend beyond mere blood boundaries. The ‘human connect’, as it is called, is fundamental to our understanding of relationships and responses. These are formed when barriers disappear between individuals unrelated by blood, ethnicity or nationality. It is the glue that holds and builds a bond. It helps us peek into each other’s hearts, feelings and thoughts. It helps us become ‘colour-blind’, which is not always a bad thing!

BOND BEYOND BARRIERS

‘Sunita, let’s go! Come play with me, it’ll be lots of fun, na? Sunita, I am waiting, this new board game is so exciting!’

That is how I used to call Sunita every day after I came back from school. I used to wait for the evenings because I had gradually discovered how special that time was for me!

My parents were busy doctors and we resided in a hospital campus. As a six-year-old, my best friend was Sunita, a little girl of my age. We often hung around together, playing with our dolls (she had only one), playing in the house or running around the tall eucalyptus trees in the backyard. Our innocence and energy were in full bloom during that stage of life.

Although Sunita and I went to different schools, we would get together after school to catch up on the day and plan our adventures with toys and other friends. Strangely, she never ate at my house; her own house being smaller than mine, she would often come over to mine to play. I remember one evening, when she had not turned up at our usual play time, I went over to her house to investigate and found her unwell. Her mother had made some fresh bread. Very hungry myself, I had asked for some too. Strangely, her mother declined to serve me, and that too quite rudely! I remember feeling absolutely bruised and the stubborn child that I was, I insisted on fulfilling my demand. She conceded after much persuasion, but told me not to tell anyone at home that I had eaten at her house. I found that even more strange and queer. Anyway, I ate the food before heading home.

When minds meet, thoughts flow, words come alive, then magic of connections happen.

I was confused by what Sunita’s mother had said to me and could not comprehend what the issue was. After dinner that day, I remember telling my mother of all that had happened at Sunita’s house. I asked her if she too thought that I should not have eaten with my best friend’s family, and if so, why?

My mother was quiet for a few minutes and then she took a deep breath before gathering the right words. She started to explain to me the confounding situation in the simplest way she could to a six-year-old, although I could see her visible discomfort and embarrassment as she went along. She explained that the family we were born in, the work that we did and the profession we were in often defined who we were in the world. People were born in different families and did different kinds of work. Some studied and had great jobs, while some others did basic work. This determined their position in society. In India, it was not befitting for those from the higher strata of society to eat with people born in a lower stratum, who did basic work such as sweeping or cleaning. She was confusing me further and I had to quiz her with my multiple ‘whys’. She patiently explained to me the caste concept in India and how some people were considered ‘untouchables’ and that most people thought that it was not desirable to mingle with them socially. But, she encouraged me to break all such social barriers and continue with my after-school conversations with Sunita. My mother made me feel that I had nothing to feel ashamed about visiting my friend’s family as long as I was safe. That was an eye-opening moment for me; a new paradigm was understood.

My friend Sunita was the daughter of a hospital sweeper and the most beautiful soul I knew. I could sense that her parents were poor and that she stayed in a one-room house and the food they ate was very basic. But, despite our many differences, we understood each other and felt ‘connected’.

A real connect emanates from love and compassion for others that encompasses everything else. I loved the serenity, the transparency and the purity of our relationship. We both respected each other and were oblivious to our social differences, concealing nothing. We led two different lives, but learnt to make our life even better by complementing our differences. I admired her tenacity and her will to go on, and she respected my humility and kindness. When there is mutual admiration, trust and understanding between two people, it automatically transcends into a bond, which is strong and durable. I also feel that this came from our own personal beliefs of being equals. The feeling of superiority and inferiority distorts a relationship and denigrates it to a superficial level. As children we do this so beautifully and unconditionally; however, we discard this as we learn more about life’s social norms. What if we can keep this alive forever and let the magic unfold with connect?

Over the years, I have worked with all types of people—some kind to me and some not so kind. However, when I reflect back, it fills me with a sense of gratitude because each person touched my life in their own special way. They all came into my life for a reason and they were magically gone once their purpose was over. I have worked with people of different colours, but I now recollect that what had brought us closer was our humane connection that led to moments in which we understood each other at a deeper level. What surely helped in forging deep ties was tiding through tough times together at work rather than just the happy moments we shared.

I feel that every relationship gives you an insight and enriches you in its own unique way. Interacting with Sunita and spending time with her was a kind of sacred indulgence. For me, each one of us is different, in the way we think, in the way we behave, the way we look and the way we are brought up. The culture or society we grow up in has a long-lasting impact on the way we perceive relationships with people close to us as well as with ‘strangers’. A stranger will always remain a stranger if we fail to understand them and envision a future where they can be our friends. The reluctance to engage with a person emotionally and psychologically leads to a lack of connect with that particular individual. This disconnect leads to gaps that may hinder the formation of a relationship because distrust, suspicion, insecurity and hatred are all liable to creep into that empty space.

The beauty about forming a connection is that it has no formula. Any relationship or connection unfolds on its own over time and connections convert into strong, unbreakable and intense bonds that last a lifetime. All one has to do is to keep one’s presuppositions in check. If we do not allow individuals from different ethnicities to mingle with us and enmesh themselves into our culture, then how are we to appreciate the differences among ourselves? In some ways, we grow up accepting the norms of colour as established by society, classifying people around us in character boxes or on the basis of their physicality, rather than our direct experiences with them. It takes courage and will to be able to adopt a new mindset, challenge existing paradigms and accept the ‘perceived unacceptable’.

As a child, like most others at that age, I was colour-blind when it came to people. I could not see the difference between social inequality, leave alone caste or religion. We should always be open to discovering ourselves, with another, irrespective of the strata of society that an individual comes from. My personal learning and growth from my friendship with Sunita have been immense, as I connected to the person in her and not to her background. We connected because we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable and innocent children. Neither of us was ashamed or awed by this connection, and this is what helped us to stay immersed in our own world of blissful humanity!

She remains a friend till date.

COSTS OF CASTEISM

Treating someone respectfully is a basic human courtesy, and starting with a positive intent makes a huge difference. For me, the feeling is reflected in an explicable sense of ease while interacting with anyone without making any assumptions basis their physicality. I feel that the warmth, tenderness and leniency that accompanies this kind of a connection assists the evolution of a bond over a longer period of time.

I think we should try to live with contradictions in how people around us are, be a little accepting of each other’s cultural differences, try to find out the similarities and imbibe tolerance. I feel that whenever we take caste or race into consideration while connecting with a person, it automatically imparts a biased definition to the relationship, which makes it hollow. It induces a behaviour that hampers the formation of any deeper connection.

India, in particular, is a land of dichotomy where inequality coexists with the harmony of co-dependence. Even after centuries of evolution of progressive mindsets, especially in urban centres, it is still difficult to completely neutralise thoughts and views on the age-old caste system in India. This is reflective of how we perceive people from different social and regional backgrounds. There are very few countries in the world where your surname lets one identify the region of the country you come from, your social ‘caste’, possible food habits, dress codes, et al.

And yet, even in 2019, reservations continue to be the primary handout for the polity. Add to this the various Indian states that demand their own subsets of differentiators based on language and region. Today, when Indian society stands at the cusp of a revolutionary transformation, an open dialogue on caste, reigning in caste-based crimes and caste-based discrimination in the social, economic and political domain is an imperative need. The economic impacts of racism and regionalism in India continue, and visibly so. The inequity among various ‘classes’ of people in India is a result of the biases against the backward classes. It is interesting to note that the socio-economic condition within the backward classes and the various caste groups is not uniform even though the Indian constitution mandated the reservation of the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and the Scheduled Tribes (STs) more than half a century ago.

In the past, each social group was identified by the quality and the kind of work they did, hence, it was quite natural for the upper caste groups to occupy white-collar jobs as opposed to the lower caste groups. In fact, as most unskilled workers came from the lower castes, this indirectly led to the inequality in the distribution of income and wealth in the country. Therefore, a division in the social sphere also affects those from the lower castes economically. It is quite evident that the lack of connect between individuals from different castes led to the sustained division of people into various social groups. In rural India, especially, people from certain castes prefer to mingle, marry and associate within the same groups, and there is lesser inter-caste interaction or association outside of the urban centres.

Casteism prevents the mingling of people across societies and hinders the dissolution of mental barriers and fences. We seem to have lost the ability to use connections as an important way of redistributing wealth across different divisions of society. Our lack of connect with the lower castes has pushed them to the lowest end of the income pyramid for no fault of theirs. This segregation has led to the poor becoming poorer, and to the perception that the lower caste should engage in low-skilled jobs, leading to socio-economic divisions in the allocation of the quality of work. A real connection in such cases would help us harness the fresh energy, the talent and the skill of the nation’s youth so that we develop much more equitably.

ROOTS MATTER!

Communities we grow up in give us life lessons and relationships that help us integrate and progress further. Being respectful of our roots, while evolving our perspectives will keep us on a strong foundation. Any loss of connect may lead to a lost identity.

The white privilege extends across the globe; time and again, the colonial era surfaces in the minds of people. Although I was born well after India had achieved independence, I have often found special treatment being meted out to fairer people by the local populace. They reserve a special status, as it were, for the Caucasian race, while unconsciously assuming a slightly subservient role for their own selves. I am unsure if white people actually expect such treatment, even though it is completely enjoyed by most. Indians are good at forgiving and forgetting. I think one can forgive, but should not forget history. There seems to be less awareness about the past, but it continues to subtly impact our relationships with the world even today.

It seems that the white populace, who have been beneficiaries of the ‘white privilege’ and have embraced it for centuries, may feel lost when they are compelled to envision a future where they are not entitled to that past privilege anymore. White privilege has been described by Paula Rothenberg as the other side of discrimination. It has been defined by experts (such as DG Hays, CY Chang, ML Manning and LG Baruth) as a ‘combination of exclusive standards and opinions that are supported by whites in a way that continually reinforces social distance between groups on the basis of power, access, advantage, majority status, control, choice, autonomy, authority, possessions, wealth, opportunity, materialistic acquisition, connection, preferential treatment, entitlement and social standing’.

Preeti, a high potential employee working in a global financial services organisation in India, was keen to work in another country, ideally a developed market to gain some international exposure. Keeping in line with her development plan, her manager worked through her request with key stakeholders and sent her to Hong Kong for an assignment. First time out of the country, she initially felt quite unsettled working in a predominantly white environment (incidentally, the work group was largely British in Hong Kong). She could not adapt to cultural norms and was constantly in touch with her previous manager back home, a well-travelled, global individual. He took over as her mentor and coached her on understanding the cultural norms, honing her softer skills, modifying her communication style, to suit the host country.

Over a period of time, Preeti started feeling settled; in a year’s time, things changed dramatically for her as she began experiencing a different life, the comforts of a developed market and the fun of working with white people. This was all good, except that she now started berating how India was such a tough place to be in. She became vocal about how India was not a great working environment with too much pressure, the streets were not clean, the list went on. Having been a global citizen himself who loved India, her earlier manager and some other colleagues back in India were amazed at her dramatic change. Preeti continued her rant about the working styles of Indians and how it was so much better overseas. Her accent changed and something in her was not recognisable anymore to her colleagues back