Global mobility offers unique opportunity to compare cultures/society. After a flight of few hours you are placed in an entirely different society. I have savored these moments. For people like us from desperately poor countries, what stands out in the western shores is the magnanimity of human feat: the things that humans have been able to do. The grand and glitter is tantalizing. However, once you live there for a while you get used to it. Upon visiting my own country from these shores, the first thing that strikes is disorganization, poverty and filth. But, once you live there for a while you slowly get used to it. What remains after these "getting used to" moments are human struggles common to all regardless of where you live.
Yet, I have come to believe, there is a fundamental difference in these societies that transcends the perceptive realm. Ours is a more unjust society. The weaker, less powerful amongst us live with lesser dignity and assertion of life. However, this is not in anyway absolute.
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We were in a train at San Francisco. There was a white man, perhaps in his late 50s or early 60s, sitting two rows ahead of us. There was an empty seat just next to him. At a stop, an young woman came in and was just about to sit next to him when he suddenly got up, curtly saying, "excuse me" and pushed himself out to the aisle from his window seat. He then murmured, "I like standing." The woman looked surprised but didn't say anything. After a little while, once a lone seat was vacant, he sat down. At his stop this man came out of the train. I looked through the window of the train at an absurd scene.
A black man was holding out the door of a building for strangers. From his looks, you could assume he was a homeless man: shabby, ungroomed, filthy looking. The man from the train went directly to him, pulling out a cigarette box, and gave it to him. The black man held the packet with his free hand (with the other hand he was holding the door). At the same instant, a black woman (who looked "homeless") bolted towards this black man and snatched the box. She looked inside the box, it was empty. Both of them looked at each other (puzzled?).
When I narrated this incident to a dear couple, it reminded my friend of absurdity in Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot." The tragicomic of this absurdity is not a rarity in this country, especially in the inner cities. The number of homeless people in the streets of San Francisco was quite striking on this visit. It is especially remarkable when we think of how prosperous this country is. A paragon of this prosperity and tragicomic was what I saw on my way to Burlington from Baltimore:
This was an advertisement for Mohegan Sun, a casino in Connecticut. They had literally written letters in the thin air in this New York skyline! The sky was a writing board.
In this country, the inner city's absurd tragicomic and the general opulence seem so disconnected. Why?-- is a question that lingers.
Yet, I have come to believe, there is a fundamental difference in these societies that transcends the perceptive realm. Ours is a more unjust society. The weaker, less powerful amongst us live with lesser dignity and assertion of life. However, this is not in anyway absolute.
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We were in a train at San Francisco. There was a white man, perhaps in his late 50s or early 60s, sitting two rows ahead of us. There was an empty seat just next to him. At a stop, an young woman came in and was just about to sit next to him when he suddenly got up, curtly saying, "excuse me" and pushed himself out to the aisle from his window seat. He then murmured, "I like standing." The woman looked surprised but didn't say anything. After a little while, once a lone seat was vacant, he sat down. At his stop this man came out of the train. I looked through the window of the train at an absurd scene.
A black man was holding out the door of a building for strangers. From his looks, you could assume he was a homeless man: shabby, ungroomed, filthy looking. The man from the train went directly to him, pulling out a cigarette box, and gave it to him. The black man held the packet with his free hand (with the other hand he was holding the door). At the same instant, a black woman (who looked "homeless") bolted towards this black man and snatched the box. She looked inside the box, it was empty. Both of them looked at each other (puzzled?).
When I narrated this incident to a dear couple, it reminded my friend of absurdity in Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot." The tragicomic of this absurdity is not a rarity in this country, especially in the inner cities. The number of homeless people in the streets of San Francisco was quite striking on this visit. It is especially remarkable when we think of how prosperous this country is. A paragon of this prosperity and tragicomic was what I saw on my way to Burlington from Baltimore:
In this country, the inner city's absurd tragicomic and the general opulence seem so disconnected. Why?-- is a question that lingers.
