Monday, February 28, 2005

y Tit(s) for x Tat(s)

How do you decide whether you should be nice or rude in any given situation? Till what point should you tolerate someone’s bad behavior. You can’t keep being nice to someone who is rude. On the other hand, you can’t be too mean or you would end up feeling badly yourself. So what are the ideal values of x and y?

There are some instances when insolence is necessary. For instance, the other day at Trader Joe's we were standing in an aisle picking up tomatoes when a lady snapped, "you have to move; can't block the aisle." I wasn't sure how to respond when my sister angrily replied, "We have to stop, you know. This is a grocery store." The lady came around with "oh I'm sorry, having a bad day." I looked approvingly at my sister. She thought I would get mad at her for it. But I was totally proud of her standing up for us like that, especially since my mom was there. I can't stand anyone being rude to my friends or family. I somehow feel that the lady would have behaved differently if it hadn’t been three mild mannered Indian women standing there. I’m sure she’ll be nicer with Indian women next time.

Another incident was when I lost my keys and my rental office manager was mean to me. She emailed me saying that I will have to get a locksmith to get it fixed, she won't let me in with their spare keys, and perhaps it was a lesson learnt for me. I was unsure about how to respond. I wrote back that I didn’t mind paying the extra $50. However, I had hoped for a more helpful attitude. The last statement was uncalled for. There was no lesson to be learnt; surely she must have found herself stuck in such situations before. I wasn’t outright rude, but the tone of message was harsh. Since then she has been extra nice to me, taking care of my apartment issues right away.

These episodes involved other women, but men can be obnoxious too. I have a harder time dealing with men’s indecency. For example, at Miami airport last month, when I approached a man to buy frozen yogurt, he smiled and extended his hand to shake mine. It seemed a bit weird for a shopkeeper to shake a customer’s hand, but I was on the other end of the continent and didn’t think much of it. He asked me where I was from, to which I responded with my standard “I’m from India; where are you from?” line. He told me he was from Egypt and suddenly asked me if I was single. After my affirmative response, he exclaimed “Really! Wow, I’m looking for a woman to marry. Think about it. Are all Indian women as beautiful as you are? ” I was totally taken aback. I wanted to say, “Are all Egyptian men jerks like you are?” Instead I smiled, took my frozen yogurt and walked back to my mom.

It is harder to decide how to react in a multi-cultural environment. You can never be sure what is acceptable in another culture. I was once complaining to a friend about Hispanic men cat-calling on the street near my work. He told me that it is actually considered flattering in Mexico. It’s more of a compliment than harassment. It’s like some people consider it rude if someone stands too close to you or asks your salary, both of which are acceptable in India.

However, there are times when a man’s intentions are obvious. Another instance was on the same Miami trip, in Key West actually. I was shopping for a wrap-around the sales guy (don’t know what’s up with the salesmen in Florida) took me in the back, looked around to check that no one was around, and lewdly said “you are a very sexy Indian lady.” I was walked out in disgust. My friends were amused and joked that I should have asked for free stuff. Back in San Francisco, another guy’s intentions were clearly pure when he man came up to me while I was working out. I was sweating it out on a stair master, with my headphones on, reading a book – what more indication does one want that I don’t want to be disturbed? Anyhow, he stood around so I took off my headphones and asked with a hint of irritation, “What’s wrong?” He asked me where I was from. To my standard response, he said, “I’m from Jamaica and I think you are very pretty. Your complexion is beautiful. I just wanted to say that.” And he walked away. I was flattered and a bit humbled.

There have been times when I’ve regretted overreacting and others when I’ve regretted under reacting. At work the other day a coworker made a bad Tsunami joke; something about how cool it would be to name a drink called Tsunami. I just looked at him in disbelief, but didn't say anything. I wish I had.

I recently read “The Selfish gene” in which Richard Dawkins asserts that evolution prefers niceness as a general rule, but only as an attribute displayed towards others who are nice. He explains with an experiment in which participants were asked to submit different strategies to win the game of Prisoner's Dilemma. The successful strategies were determined by playing them against each others in a seemingly infinite loop. The tit-for-tat strategy was deemed the most successful. Even the nicer tit-for-2-tats was a losing strategy, as were other meaner ones. Two traits selected were niceness (always cooperate unless opponent defects), and forgiveness (don’t remember who defected.) This is the general rule I will now try to apply in real life situations. Though it’s not that easy to forgive and forget.

My grandmother used to tell us a story. It won't be half as effective without her theatricals, but here goes. There was a snake that didn't have any friends. Other animals were afraid of it because it would bite them. The snake was very sad so it asked God, "Why don't I have any friends?" God replied, "If you bite others, how can they be friends with you? Be nice and you'll make tonns of friends." The snake followed God's advice and stopped biting other animals. Soon everyone lost their fear of the snake. Now they started stepping on it and hurting it. The snake went to God again and said, "Look what happened when I followed your advice. I still don't have any friends, in addition now everyone hurts me." God said matter-of-factly, "well of course. I told you stop biting. I never said you shouldn't hiss."

Comments:
You shud be really pretty in that case. So many guyz flirted with u :)
 
Well that's the thing; I'm not. It's jsut that I'm Indian and they probably have this stereotype of Indian women being exotic in some way. You completely missed the point though. I guess I didn't do a good job of it.
 
Oic.
 
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