Friday, May 25, 2007
Beijing 01
Madhuri and I went to Beijing on 19th and came back on 24th May. I was attending an AACSB conference. Mads went sight-seeing. These are some impressions of Beijing.
The first evening we went out with Leo to find some veg food. In the vicinity, there was a Department of Chemistry of the University. So we saw lots of students moving on the streets. Then there were the street food joints serving hot and spicy stuff. The aroma was inviting indeed but we stepped aside. I could see many couples moving around, some clinging close to each other. I remarked about it to Leo.
Leo looked at me and said, 'But, it is normal, isn't it? Not so in your country?' It struck me that the Chinese have progressed primarily because they have shrugged off a lot of the baggage of conservative and unrealistic notions about life. In the restaurant again there were many couples. A boy got too close to his girlfriend. I became uncomfortable. Nobody seemed to mind. So I surmised this again was considered normal.
I heard this word 'normal' a few times more in conversations with the Chinese. I wondered if in India we had the same notions of what is normal between boys and girls. I thought about it and felt that it was very important to remove false notions about distance, separation and customs from the minds of young adults. That way they could see the challenges before them and take responsibility for their life.
I asked our guide if there were instances of misbehaviour with women on the public transport. She looked at me askance. Misbehaviour? Everyone behaves responsibly. That is normal, she said.
The first evening we went out with Leo to find some veg food. In the vicinity, there was a Department of Chemistry of the University. So we saw lots of students moving on the streets. Then there were the street food joints serving hot and spicy stuff. The aroma was inviting indeed but we stepped aside. I could see many couples moving around, some clinging close to each other. I remarked about it to Leo.
Leo looked at me and said, 'But, it is normal, isn't it? Not so in your country?' It struck me that the Chinese have progressed primarily because they have shrugged off a lot of the baggage of conservative and unrealistic notions about life. In the restaurant again there were many couples. A boy got too close to his girlfriend. I became uncomfortable. Nobody seemed to mind. So I surmised this again was considered normal.
I heard this word 'normal' a few times more in conversations with the Chinese. I wondered if in India we had the same notions of what is normal between boys and girls. I thought about it and felt that it was very important to remove false notions about distance, separation and customs from the minds of young adults. That way they could see the challenges before them and take responsibility for their life.
I asked our guide if there were instances of misbehaviour with women on the public transport. She looked at me askance. Misbehaviour? Everyone behaves responsibly. That is normal, she said.
# posted by Bhupatkar @ 11:06 PM 
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i think indians would like to be just as 'normal' but they get set upon by hawaldars!! when will the indian state grow up and let people be. tragically we have turned in to a fossilised state now where the state chooses to legislate even on morality! very stalinist when one thinks of it! :)
I come from Mumbai (Bombay i still call it, mumbai sounds dogmatic and ancient) where the notion of night life exist as it should, throughout the night. People can go and chat up with each other late into the night at lot of places without being terrorised by brutes and brutes dressed in uniforms. Unlike the city where i am living currently, where sitting two feet apart from a girl can still invite angry stares and dhamki of being dragged of to jail.
It is pleasantly surprising to note that the Chinese have broken these social barriers.
Surely a factor of -
education, sex-ratio, maturity of society, political (communist) heavy-handedness of miscreants.
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Surely a factor of -
education, sex-ratio, maturity of society, political (communist) heavy-handedness of miscreants.
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