Be Kind to People You Meet
Or At Least, Try To Be
Scenario 1 — A Rude, Littering Taxi Driver
A few weeks ago, I was outside my house helping mom park her scooter outside to get ready for her office commute. I noticed a Taxi parked a few meters away, facing away from us. The driver just threw out an empty plastic bottle onto the pavement/footpath.
This incident triggered something in me. I don’t know what the feeling was; I knew it was something negative because it wasn’t pleasant to experience it — it was probably anger, disappointment, shock, [insert few other negative emotions]. It made me realize that I don’t like littering public places; I value maintaining public places cleanly and taking whatever litter I have to a dustbin for disposal(instead of casually throwing it on the street).
As a result, seeing others litter in public like this — feels like a direct violation of my values & beliefs. For example:- Let’s say you are a religious person, professing your faith to religion X, and somebody next to you in public says to their friend, “X sucks, I don’t know why people still follow it!?”. How would you feel when somebody just violates or insults your core values?
Back to the story, I grabbed the bottle from the ground and dumped it into the waste bin in my house. I was hoping the driver would observe me doing this and would feel some level of guilt seeing another person clean up a mess he created. However, he was busy staring down at his phone.
A few minutes later, I took the courage to talk to him — requesting him to not litter. Somewhere inside me, I knew this wasn’t a good idea. Unfortunately, in Bangalore(my hometown), taxi & rickshaw drivers don’t have a good reputation and are known to be rude, behaving as if the road belongs to them and they can never do wrong. I convinced myself that this was a bias and to at least give it a shot in talking to this person.
I tried to be as kind as possible, addressing him as “sir,” greeting him first, etc. When I requested him to next time keep the bottle in the car and throw it when he sees a dustbin, he turned cold. He rudely blurted out “aagalla guru!”(which means “can’t do, bro!” in Kannada, the local language), which was the exact opposite to my attempt to talk to him in a formal & respectful way.
I was shocked by his cold behavior and didn’t know how to react. So I just walked away. The entire conversation ended within 20 seconds. It seemed like the bias of taxi drivers being rude people was true in this case. When I narrated this incident to my father, he told me that such people can never be corrected as they are unwilling to listen to others and change their wrong ways. It is better for us to stay away from such people as there’s no point in even trying to change them.
Scenario 2 — A kind bus conductor
A few days later. It was about 8:30 in the morning; I was waiting at a bus stop to catch a bus to go to a movie theatre. It was early morning, so most of the shops were yet to open, and the road was relatively empty. There were a few people waiting for the bus as well.
Finally, a bus showed up. It was the one that went to my destination. Since I don’t take this route often, I wasn’t 100% sure that this route would indeed take me, though, so I asked the conductor.
He calmly told me with a smile: “Of course it goes, please get in” in a formal but friendly manner. It just left me with a smile :-)
Once we boarded and the bus was ready to begin its route, the conductor’s behavior with the passengers was heartening to see. It was a good example of how to treat people in a way that makes them feel happy. He was patient in explaining the route to a passenger who wasn’t sure where he was supposed to get down — he just knew he had to go to a particular hospital(“Just get down at X, I will remind you when it arrives, and then walk down that road for 2 minutes, sir”). I also felt he had a warm accent.
Once I alight the bus, I will probably never see this guy again. This was the only time the two of us might interact in this world; our paths may never cross again. Yet, even today, I occasionally think about him to remind myself that there are kind people out there, and I too should continue to be kind & respectful.
Maybe he was being kind since it was his first route for the day, so he was fresh from sleeping. Come afternoon, he may not be the same due to tiredness and exhaustion from dealing with too many passengers — but it was still a fine example of how to behave and respect people.
How have the above two scenarios affected me?
Although it’s been a good few weeks since either incident took place, I occasionally think about them both. Whenever I am having random thoughts or thinking of random incidents & memories, the “rude taxi driver” incident and the “kind bus conductor” both come to mind.
For the taxi driver, I begin to question myself: Should I have stayed on and started berating him for being rude? Should I have continued to talk to him in a formal tone and try to convince him? Should I have started a physical fight to teach him a lesson?
While I do believe that it’s a bias and not all taxi/rickshaw drivers are the same, I still wouldn’t recommend you get into such fights & conversations with taxi/rickshaw drivers in India. They are notorious for behaving rudely and not willing to see if they were in the wrong(I know there are good drivers out there, but they seem to be the exception).
I have noticed that I become a little apprehensive when talking to strangers; my mind immediately thinks of that taxi driver and begins to go all defensive. It’s as if it expects a rude response from any stranger that I talk to. I still experience a host of negative emotions whenever I think about this incident. I felt that,
- It was not the right way to talk to someone who is trying to be kind to you;
- It was a direct violation of my values that one should always be willing to listen to others and seek to learn and become better(imagine if I say “can’t do bro” to my manager who is giving me critical feedback with good intentions!)
In order to convince my mind to not overthink this solo incident, I remind it of that bus conductor. I use him as an example to convince my mind(& myself) to continue to be kind to people and treat them well.
His memories make me feel calmer — like a cool breeze in the middle of a firestorm of anger and shock that the taxi driver evokes in me.
So what am I trying to say here?
Just be kind to people. Look at how the taxi driver has affected me mentally. At least for a few more weeks while his memory is still fresh in me, I have to deal with those negative emotions that he evokes in me. I have to remind myself that there are good people too, like the bus conductor.
Now look at what that conductor has done; I’m sure he’s left all those other passengers with me in a “happy place.” Everybody likes to be treated with respect, and he gave us that.
This also reminds me of the movie Joker(2019). Arthur Fleck(who becomes the joker at the end) keeps encountering rude responses almost everywhere he goes — the lady in the bus tells him to stay away from her daughter when he was simply trying to make her laugh; Thomas Wayne and Alfred do not give him respect when he talks to them; Robert De Niro’s character berates him without understanding Arthur emotionally. If at least one of them had smiled at him and listened to him for a while, things would have probably turned different.
I badly wanted to jump into the screen and be that one person that smiles at him. I walked out of the theatre thinking: Man, we all need to be kinder to people.
So this is all I am saying. Whenever you talk to any person(stranger, colleague, friend, relative, or whoever), always try to treat them with respect. Make them feel happy and good that they talked to you. You do not realize the kind of emotional impact you leave(and for how long) on people in just a few minutes of talking to them. These memories will linger on for a long time and continue to evoke emotions and thoughts in people long after you’ve interacted with them; people will remember you.
Thank you for listening to me — Mahesh S.
