The Indian Way

A 12th class student told me she'd never take a job of a waitress at some Pizza place as it's really demeaning. If I had been asked a question like this 15 years ago or even 10 years ago I would have said the same thing. The brutal truth about the Indian society is that we think that every job that doesn't involve sitting in chairs for longer duration is worthless. That's my way of looking at it.

There are people like me, who are heavily influenced by foreign movies and TV series which gives you a view into the life in the west. What I learnt from them is that every person is treated equally regardless of their occupation. A dialogue from a very old Indian movies goes like this "The one who is serving you lunch in the afternoon will be playing billiards with you in the evening". When will we give the same respect to people here in our own country?

This is not a recent problem, the problem has been there from thousands of years. If you give it a thought, in the times of Lord Ram, there were 4 varna (Castes): Kshatriya - Warriors and administrators, Brahmin - Priests and Teachers, Vaishya - Traders, and Shudra - The servers. Shudras' only purpose was to serve the other 3 varna. We never respected the servers back then, we are not respecting them now.

Today, you go to Mc-Donalds or US Pizza or Dominos, those waiters who you do not respect might be speaking better English than you do, they may be graduates and could not find a white collar job like yours, they may even be working part time to support their education, and instead of helping them out, we treat them like they are beneath us. I have no research to show how many people are educated and working in the service industry or any other such odd jobs but everyone knows without any research that we have always treated them differently.

This needs to change now. Start respecting everyone irrespective of the job they do. No job is any less, the circumstances lead to the place where you are now. Some people beat the odds and go up the ladder quickly, while many stay where they are, but they are still important human lives, so stop this abuse right away. Educate the next generation to be equal to everyone, and then only then there will be peace. Our country is flooding with differences, let us make an effort to remove atleast 1. The Indian way needs to change.