Riding back from scenic Waterloo with Alan after a well earned cricket victory in a friendly match, we were making small talk about Alan's home town, Melbourne, my home town Mumbai, Europe and living here and how it contrasted with situation back home...
Suddenly Alan pouted something that made me sit up and look at him with my mouth wide open as I never expected him to say that! To quote him, The first thing that struck me after coming here in Europe was just how many people there are here! Everywhere you go, there are people ...
I recollected my reaction when I had landed here in Europe for the first time and it went something like this..Just how much space these guys have here in Europe! How well-spaced are the structures here. The sky looks so big!! So few people .... lovely open greens!
Now that you know our reactions when we landed in Europe, you can see how same place can evoke absolutely contrasting reactions/images in people's minds. What it tells you is how differing people's backgrounds are. How differently people live in this world!
Just to put these contradictions in perspective, sample these statistics. I have been born and brought up in a distant suburb of Mumbai. The megapolis (considering its entire urban agglomeration) has roughly 20 million people living in it. My small suburb has a population of roughly 1.2 million which is almost equivalent to the total people living in entire Brussels! Brussels has a population density of 6,697 people per sq.km while my small suburb in Mumbai has a rough population density of 8,700 people per sq. km. Now, lastly, and hold your breath for this, entire Australia has a population of 22 million - which is roughly equal to population of urban agglomeration of Mumbai!!!!
After these last bit of statistics, you can imagine how different and how vastly sparse was the land that Alan was coming from and how densely populated the land that I was coming from ...Come to think of it, because one grows and spends formative years in such vastly different conditions, one develops one's approach, attitude, survivalistic skills and living ideas and values in sync with his/her surroundings.
I believe Indians have roughly the same amount of opportunity available for its populace as entire Europe has for its populace. But, for a population that is roughly 62% more than entire Europe. What that does to human mind and how abominable our existence becomes especially in view of how meagre our resources are in view of our huge population. We have learned to maximise our meagre resources. We have that peculiar survivalistic gene handed down for generations now. But, what that has done is put in our minds a view that there is a vulgar display of wealth by those well-off. We think if someone owns a farm land outside the city or has a farm house and such stuff or owns a Mercedes, that's flaunting of wealth and mostly termed vulgar. And more so because we always point out how many people are living below poverty line and how they don't have food to eat and such 'important' facts.
But, the same Mercedes is fairly common here in Europe and the farm house is a generally accepted way of living a normal conservative life. People have nice gardens in their homes. This is a luxury in India. People in Europe don't spend 3 hours one way to work! And now scale this to Australia. Such abundant resources and opportunities and so less people.
These wonderfully diverse conditions bring people to different responses for same situations. I see Europeans struggling in this economic climate at work. So less money to pull this off they think. They see gloom. But, people from Eastern Europe, India and China and importantly the employees from these backgrounds see opportunities. They are putting up ideas which don't often make sense to European colleagues who have the habit of working with ample buffer of money and such. They don't have the habit of scraping through by the skin of one's teeth. Its wonderful what happens when people from such diverse backgrounds come together in a team. This is where you see that 1 and 1 actually is greater than 3 ...the wonderful manifestation of humanity and that divine phrase Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam ...the world is one family. When these different family members come together, world does indeed become a better place...
It's time that humanity accepts its universal nature and that its the same in Carribbean to Europe to India to Japan! We are the same ... no use fighting and trying one-upmanship ... also, there is a strong reason that we in India should try to get our growth rates down and let our kin enjoy similar affluence and resource-abundance of some other places in world. I would say the aim should be at least Europe, if not Australia!
Perspectives differ because of where you come from and how you have been brought up ... they matter in the end to making this earth more 'liveable' ..... hugely... don't they??
