Fighting preconceptions

“Don’t expect any politeness in Mumbai. It’s been named the world’s rudest city”. I heard this on Al Jazeera International a while ago… It got me thinking… If you ask me, one of the hardest tasks someone has to face from the day he decides to travel to India until the day he arrives there, is maintain a clear and open mind. Is Mumbai indeed the world’s rudest city? I don’t know… Given that it’s one of the world’s biggest cities, it makes perfect sense having a big number of rude people, I guess, as well as a huge number of polite people. Common sense… My point is, you go to… Hawaii, for example, you have heard amazing stories about how friendly the people are, there, you bump onto someone, shoulder to shoulder, you say “sorry”, he says nothing, he just passes you by, and you tell yourself, “oh well, just an exception to the rule”. The same scene happens in Mumbai, your first day there, and you tell yourself, “typical Mumbaikar”… See what I mean? “As a westerner you attract locals’ attention, they pretend to want to help you, but actually they are just after your money”, is another ‘tip’ you get from… experienced India travelers, as you are getting prepared for your own first ever trip there. Is this true? To some extend, I bet it is. The task a virgin India traveler faces, is to keep in mind that not EVERY ‘friendly’ or Friendly Indian is after your money… Cleanliness/dirt? Same thing. In Damascus I stayed at the best, supposedly, budget hotel, the one coming with the best recommendations from all guidebooks, and yet, the first morning I woke up with 104 (yep, counted), bites from those little sneaky creatures that hide in the bed until you fall asleep and then they take advantage of your fatigue/deep sleep to throw a royal party on your body, drinking your blood until they have no more spare room in their greedy bellies… It happened to me in Damascus, in a well-recommended hotel, so I said, “OK, just an exception to the rule”. What will I say (hope not) if the same thing happens to me in… Mysore, for example? “So typical of India…”, even if it happens to me a whole week after I first step on Indian soil. It’s easy to fall in the trap of adopting a preconception. What’s hard is to keep an open and clear mind, and it IS hard because India comes with a whole bunch of negative descriptions, as well as positive ones, of course… But the thing is, when you fall in the ‘trap’ of adopting a complimentary cliché, even if it is not 100% accurate, no harm is done… When you blindly adopt a negative cliché, you risk being unfair, you risk making a whole mountain out of a tiny molehill, and what’s maybe even worse, is that once your trip is over, you become the continuer of the same defamatory stories you were ‘fed’ yourself before arriving at India… Do I sound too ‘pro India’? This is not my intention… My intention is to sound ‘pro keeping an open and clear mind before and during a trip, any trip’, not being ready to… behead a whole country and its people after the first unpleasant or annoying situation you find yourself into. That’s all…

Five days to go, and I feel like (no giggles, please) Jodi Foster in ‘Contact’, towards the end of the movie, when she is in that… ‘ball’, free falling, being overwhelmed by excitement, knowing that she is about to experience something unique, not knowing though what exactly to expect… (now you can giggle).