The Big J

Don’t judge others.

LOLJK.

That’s never happening. Human evolution won’t allow it. If one excludes the ‘mean’ component, judging others tells us more about ourselves than others. There are various manners to go about it. You can check out somebody’s way of speaking and make mental notes on how fake that accent is or how rustic that intonation could be. Similarly, you can judge a person by the way they dress. We might weep our eyes out while watching movies like The Help (2011) and Hidden Figures (2016) but we don’t even realize that we unwittingly mete out a similar shameful attitude towards those who don’t belong to our class, be it the maid who works for us 7-days-a-week or the pantry boy whose name we don’t know yet despite receiving help from him every passing week.

It’s all inside our heads.

Who is what and which is how. Until and unless we don’t challenge these preconceived abomination of thoughts, we won’t reach the parity field. Judging is bad but judging something collectively can be atrocious. For example, i was at a Vodafone gallery recently. I was waiting for my turn when loud, threatening complaints were made by a non-gentleman in sweatshirt. By his voice, his middle-aged Haryanvi identity was more than apparent. He wouldn’t let the Vodafone executive utter a word of explanation. And if that wasn’t enough, he wouldn’t leave his seat either. I was next in line. I waited longer, of course, because Gurgaon has taught me to stay away from rowdy natives. While i was waiting, it occurred to me how casual all my fellow customers were with (dis)respect to this guy. As if it was OK for someone to speak in the way he did. Just because he’s a Jat? This is when i wondered how the surrounding would have reacted if the ranting individual happened to be a bearded fellow in pathani. Think about the kind of situation that would have been. Judgement would have been all over the place. Speaking of which, judge as much as you like but keep your unsolicited judgements to yourself.