A guide to the uncivic Indian

It was a slim book called This Way Please Its author was I remember Eleanor Boykin We were schoolboys easily influenced eager to be influenced The book written in a lively friendly style offered lovely advice we would never use on public behaviour with chapters like Learning to be at ease with people Talk and popularity Manners at the table Rubbing elbows with the public Good travellers and Boys and girlsWe didnrsquot get to meet many girls such were those times and we were not frequent travellers but we still loved Eleanor Boykinrsquos book because we knew that anyone who behaved like that would be respected and admired They would be seen as people of good manners a phrase no one uses any moreThey would be people with civic senseThatrsquos a phrase wersquore suddenly hearing a lot of these days mainly because Indians it seems donrsquot have much of it Irsquove been seeing the videos so have you Theyrsquore all over YouTube Instagram and Reddit They feature our brothers and sisters doing unspeakable shameless things in distant countries in broad daylightLetrsquos talk about Bombai Click the QR code above to join my WhatsApp group to share your Bombai stories for my bookmdashand perhaps answer some of my Bombai questionsOne shows a London fire hydrant covered with streaks of paan exactly like every lamp post in every Indian city Another shows a raucous crowd of barechested Ganesh worshippers marching through Paris streets on their way to a visarjan in the Seine River A third video shows a gaggle of Indian 30somethings breaking out in a Bollywood bhangra dance in New Yorkrsquos Times Square Theyrsquod gone prepared to deafen with amplifiers and boom bass speakers Itrsquos a small matter that they instantly drowned out the jazz quartet that had already been playing thereThe world it seems is watching uncouth India newly rich suddenly able to travel to cities that they had only seen before in Bollywood romances and thrillers Their sloppiness and mefirst behaviour are all over social media eating wet food with their hands in a metro train spitting leaving a litter trail breaking queues talking loudly treating waiters like lesser human beings trying to leave the plane in a tearing hurry and bargaining because itrsquos such fun to haggle but never buy anythingAnd groping women In the last few years Thailand has seen a spike in the number of Indians requiring bail after being arrested by Thai police mdash for molestationDonrsquot take my word for it Watch YouTuber Raja Gujjar sidling up as close as he can to foreign women and showing off his unique harassment style to his 4 lakh followers Bada neech admi hai tu comments one of them with open admiration Or watch him sprawled in a gondola in Venice gesturing to a senora on a bridge to join him in the boat Aa ja rani aa ja idhar baithWatch YouTubersquos Malik Swashbuckler bald and creepy walking next to a young woman in Turkey telling her in Hindi Kya maal hai tu He was arrested and deported laterNo Indian school has classes on how to behave in public civic sense is not taught anywhere There is no equivalent of Eleanor Boykinrsquos This Way Please to guide our strutting young bearded hunks on how to be dignified respectful respectable human beings As India Shining started to emerge from its woodwork as a growing economic powerhouse and a global leader mdash we also seem to be showing the world our current lsquoculturersquo with the crude moves of a juvenile delinquentMisbehaviour has become Indiarsquos top exportReally Is this us I put the question to the community of my readers who have joined Bombai Stories my WhatsApp group Use the QR code on this page to join An interesting insight came from reader Akar Gosrani mdashldquoThe people who travel in the local train are the same people who use the metro yet they behave very differently in these two spaces One environment offers zero space and treats the passenger with disdain the other offers some amount of dignity even if modestIf the quality and design of our physical infrastructure is bad or nonexistent the civic sense will be similarrdquoYoursquove seen that if an environment is spick and span no one wants to be the first to litter But if itrsquos already a dump itrsquos preapproved for litteringReader Cheryl A said a minority of boorish Indians were giving the country a bad name and that she had seen Americans spit litter and talk loudly too But the question is not who else is a slob but why we areChildren who watch their adults cut lights spit from the car window argue with officials evade penalties with bribes learn quickly following rules is optional especially if no onersquos watching Everything breaks down at once Traffic lights are treated as suggestions Rules become obstacles Every regulation becomes a challenge to circumventMy auto was on an empty side road behind a lone motorcycle driving slowly hugging the left kerb but my driver kept honking till I asked him whyldquoHe will suddenly do something unexpectedrdquo he said ldquoLike trying to cross over to the other side I have to assume that Honking a lot is to let him know Irsquom behind himrdquoYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper