Callousness

Anand Giridharadas in India Calling on why its so easy to harden yourself to the misery around you

"The dependency scares you, as a needy lover's demands scare you, for it suggests a bottomless pit of giving that will devour you if you give in just slightly and allow yourself to care."

Indifference

Indifference would be the more appropriate title for the last entry. Loneliness was what I started to write about, but I ended up making more of a comment on indifference rather than loneliness. Anyways, that's the random thought of today.

Loneliness

Seeing poor homeless people is no new experience. Coming from India, poverty in all its ugliness is not a novel sight. Though there is one aspect of poverty that I only noticed here in USA.

New York has its fare share of homeless people. I would not call them "poor" as the term is used in India (poor in India is starving, even a homeless in USA would have a drink of Pepsi), but nonetheless they are poor. Living on the streets, their plight, especially in cold snowy months of winter - when you see them sleep on manhole covers which are comparatively warm from all the steam rising from city's gutters and subways - is gut wrenching. When you see the light and warmth and riches beyond imagination just a few feet away, you can't but feel bewildered by this strange world.

There is a particular old homeless man who lives on the steps of a church near my home. I have seen him almost everyday for the past two years. Begging the passing mass of humanity for money or food. I must admit I paid him passing attention; he was a one-dimensional personality, sitting on those steps. Then one beautiful sunny day when I was going my way I saw him coming towards me from the distance. There was a policeman standing on the corner and when he saw the old man he said something to him. I did not hear what he said, but it seemed like a greeting, a "how do you do?" that we exchange a hundred times over the course of the day. And the old man gave a broad genuine from the bottom of his heart happy smile. A smile that transformed his face, a smile that changed him, a smile that made him a person from that non-descript one dimensional man that I was used to seeing. I had passed him by before the smile ended, but I wonder how lonely a person must be to be filled with such joy at being recognized, on hearing a friendly voice. I have had my share of days when I have felt lonely, but to feel alone day after day, with no end in sight? That is a fate I cannot imagine, a state that I would find impossible to survive.

Today on my way I saw the old man again. Sitting on the usual steps, begging for money the usual way, I passed him by in the rich and glittering city of New York, with my Ipod and Bose headphones, wondering what a strange world this is...

Smart people act smart

The other day I figured that there are three kinds of people. (a) Some who are very intelligent and smart but pretend to be just average or below average, (b) some who are fools but pretend to be better than they are, and finally, (c) some who are smart, and know they are smart, and are not afraid to hide that. It is so refreshing to meet the third kind. I feel split between who is worse, the ones who pretend to be dumb or the ones who pretend to be smart.

I also wonder why type (c) people are sometimes disliked by type (a)....