India and Singapore: Worlds apart

Two incidents that will forever remain etched in my memory:
I was about to leave my sister-in-law’s house in Singapore to meet a friend for drinks when the door of the room my daughter was sleeping in got locked. We tried every key in the house but the lock wouldn’t turn. The only other way into that room was through the bathroom window. The house was on the third floor, so that wasn’t an option.
We rushed to the security guard of the condominium and asked for a locksmith’s number. We told the locksmith that it was an emergency: my 20-month-old daughter was locked inside a room. He promised to be there in 15 minutes.
He reached in 10. I was not sure if he was the man but I called out from the third floor anyway. He started running towards our house and had climbed the stairs within 20 seconds – normally it took me about a minute even though I climb stairs very fast.
He got down to work immediately and broke open the lock within about 15 seconds. I could see that he was concerned about a child being locked inside: even more than the child’s own parents. The moment he unlocked the door, he asked if our daughter was alright. She was still sleeping and we all heaved a sigh of relief. It was then that he talked business: the lock had to be replaced and it would cost this much. We gladly obliged and, Indian that I am, I checked in the market if he had been fair: he had been.
Had the same happened in India, the locksmith would have fleeced us: worse still, he would have taken his own sweet time to get to the place and another round of “pehle thoda paani pila do” before he would have started working. But not in Singapore. The locksmith was a thorough professional – and a gentleman too.
The second incident:
Public transport is amazing in Singapore, to say the least. Taxi stands are earmarked and people have to queue up before they catch the taxi – and no, the taxi driver cannot refuse to take you wherever you want to go unless he’s finishing his shift and going home – in which case he will already have the place he’s going to displayed. This is true of all of Singapore – except Mustafa Centre, the hub of all things Indian.
At Mustafa Centre, a 24-hour shopping mall, the taxi stand holds no meaning. People do queue up there, but they are only Singaporeans or foreigners. And they keep waiting. Indians, on the other hand, run around the road – though jaywalking is a serious crime in Singapore -- flag down taxis before they reach the stand – some literally stand in the middle of the road, forcing the driver to stop – and haggle. Oddly enough, even the drivers, the same drivers who follow all the rules in the rest of Singapore, gladly oblige.
On weekends, party-goers wait for 40-45 minutes before getting into a taxi from places like Clarke Quay (pronounced Clark Kee), a riverfront hub of pubs, restaurants and an extreme bungee ride. Most shops here stay open till 3 or 4 a.m. on weekends and the mood is, obviously, very party-ish.
But not once did I see anyone cutting queues or trying other methods -- like Indians do outside Mustafa Centre – to get a taxi faster than the guy who actually deserves it and has been waiting.
But that’s what we Indians are, aren’t we? Different. Or, I should say, hideously indifferent to rules and laws.
And yes, another incident.
When I returned to Delhi, I had to fill out the immigration forms at the airport. I took three, kept my bag on the table and looked down to take a pen out. Within 5 seconds, a lady, again an Indian an a co-passenger on the flight, wacked the forms from right under my nose.
India Shining!



Yours truly at the Hard Rock Cafe, Singapore. And that's Eddie Van Halen's guitar.
This will be my next post: the bars of Singapore and Malaysia

Media and the Indian mindset

Around two years back, while returning home from work late in the night, I noticed a huge jam on the Dwarka flyover. It was pretty late and generally the road used to be deserted at that hour. I parked some distance away from the hold-up and noticed that a bus had rammed into three cars. Nobody was hurt. The police were there and so were the owners of the cars. The bus driver, apparently drunk, had hit the cars. No major damage. All the cars were capable of being driven on.
I asked one of the owners why he couldn’t remove his car, now that the police report had been written. What he told me was symptomatic of the society today. “We have called a news channel. We will not let the bus or cars remover till our quotes have been taken.”
The role of the media – especially broadcast media – has been pivotal in shaping our society today. Everybody and his uncle want their 15 minutes of fame. So what if thousands of other people are inconvenienced?
At a recent talk show on Doordarshan, the panel of editors was asked why journalists tend to air shows or news that titillate? Simple, because the audience wants it, said one. I think that is perfectly logical argument. In this day and age when any body can launch a channel – and most of them are – why would you want to air serious stuff that few are going to watch anyway.
Then another member of the audience asked a channel head why his journalists do not step in when they see somebody trying self-immolation or is any other kind of serious trouble. “We are not social activists,” was the answer.
Perfectly logical answer, again. Only, I would like to add something.
If a reporter out to cover a desperate measure by a citizen intervenes, he would have nothing to show. Which, in effect, means there would be no negative news, no social evils to report. Only a rosy picture. Now that would be something I don’t want to see every time I switch on my TV.