233. India: Dropping and Picking Up Things: Part Two
If people dropped things on the floor- that was their problem- as long as I didn’t do it - since I knew better.
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| I have no problem in stooping down to the floor - Gandhi Memorial Area |
I was in an area just east-south of Delhi- and area in India is important for each region is a country of its own with its own characteristics, dictates and customs. I spent a third of the whole of my time in India in this area and noticed that in this particular area if I dropped, a pen, a paper, a spoon or any other every day use object I was not allowed to pick it up. I was forcibly held back as I stooped to pick it up. I let it go once or twice but then I simply had to ask why. Of course, there is no clear answer... basically the message I got was that there, in that particular part of the woods, one did not pick up something from the floor, oneself
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| It seems neither do these people have a problem with stooping - outside Jaipur train station |
At this point I did my own summing up, perhaps people stood to gain by the objects I dropped because they would possess them- but this just did not hold water because most of the stuff I dropped belonged to the establishment and not to me. Or perhaps the floor was considered to be dirty and therefore I would contaminate myself by picking something up. I can understand if it were something I would use personally, like a spoon but it made no sense for other objects since I placed my bag on the floor and picked it up again later.
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| Or these - Jaipur Train station |
No, it was the act of stooping down to pick up something that was for my hosts some kind of sacrilege. Little did they know, picking up things when one drops them is part and parcel of daily life for us common mortals in the West. So I concluded it was considered as being beneath me to pick up my own stuff, and one just did not do it.
No wonder, I sighed to myself, there is such a great need for such a huge number of servants in India.
Fortunately, not everyone in India, thinks this to be so.
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