Delivery boy or your doctor — being kind without 'conditions-apply'

Window Seat

Whose side were you on when you saw the video of a woman bleeding from her nose who said she had been hit by a food-delivery guy while she was on the phone asking the company to cancel the order as the delivery was late? Did you switch sides when you later heard the man’s version, who said he had been sacked, despite waiting patiently while the lady was on the phone, and that it was she who had flung her slippers at him, hit herself, then made the video? Or when you saw a picture of him, eyes brimming, asking “Main aurat nahin, toh main galat?” (So, I’m wrong because I am not a woman?)

This column is not to play judge on who was wrong and who was wronged, but to examine an issue that the Zomato episode exposed -- how we treat those around us who serve us -- which was debated on social media for days. This trait, of behaving in a certain way with those we consider “below us” in the social and economic order while being absolutely civil to our colleagues, respectful (even fawning/groveling) to those above us as higher-ups, has been so common that we don’t even see it as a problem. The maids and the men who work in our homes, no matter their age, are addressed as ‘nee/neenu/tu/tum’ (in the singular, that is) in Indian languages which, unlike English, have a warm phrase for those older or those who must be addressed with respect, such as ‘neenga/neevu/aap’ in the plural. Many let even their children speak down to or yell at the house-help and street-sweepers.

The corporate world has tried to play the equaliser; the peon of yesteryears is today’s office assistant, cleaners and those who bring you tea at work are housekeeping. Yet, in house parlance, “I got late to work because my servant did not turn up,” comes naturally to a nation that can’t be bothered to use ‘domestic help.’

We also expect the working class to behave in a certain way – to gloat when we are good to them, to be bent with gratitude when we offer help. If the lady help refuses leftover food from our fridge, she is “arrogant”. If the gardener says no to the hand-me-down clothes of our kids that we think would be good for his kids, how dare he! Weekly offs, if given, are as per our wish; leave for travel or sickness – grudgingly, leading to them bunking work or not turning up at all, repeatedly killing off a fictitious grandfather of theirs. Books, clothes given to charity are not those we think the other side needs but what helps clear clutter at home.

When post-lockdown, new migrants in a hamlet in Hassan were unable to eat the South Indian vegetarian fare that well-meaning organisations had taken to feed them, pictures went viral of “ungrateful North Indian labourers who had wasted food”, never mind that the food of a new place and culture takes time to get used to.

The flip side is that this trait then spawns a whole culture of subsidy on the other side -- of entitlement to be given freebies, of work that won’t move unless given inaam or baksheesh. Our culture, across religions, goads us to be kind to all. What would make it powerful is when kindness is given with respect, without being patronising.

Last month, I was asked to speak and facilitate at an international kindness festival. Famous people spoke of random acts of kindness that had rescued them from a life of drugs and loneliness; others spoke of how the kindness that they had put to practice in their workplace had enriched their personal lives, leading us to infer that being kind can be useful, too.

Kindness of the selfless kind, too, is right around us; lakhs of people who quietly do things for the old, the homeless, the voiceless that includes animals who are not even of ‘use’ to them. Philanthropist Sudha Murty told me how as a kid, she saw her grandmother keep aside fine rice grains in their village front yard in a bag, a handful of which would be given to whoever came seeking alms, while the family would eat more ordinary stuff for the night. “I saw how those who gave did not feel superior giving, and those who received did not feel lowly in receiving. There was a gentle equilibrium.” That then is something to be learnt as part of the art of living – the art of giving.