Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Rude and courteous

Many of us argue with the result of the Reader's Digest survey, citing incidents from our own lives to defend the people of Mumbai, said to be less polite than the people of Paris and New York. Mumbai and Paris are huge cities — melting pots for hundreds of thousands of people. Courteousness is not something that can be measured and compared numerically. In Mumbai, there was this incident in which a man was hit by a train. He lay face down with blood. Not a single onlooker bothered to put him in an ambulance. However, there are incidents where citizens show kindness. An old woman may be helped on to a train or tourists may receive help from taxi-drivers. Similarly in Paris, some people treat Indians like dirt while others look up to them with respect. We should be questioning the methods used in the survey instead of arguing with its results.

V. Prashanth,
Coimbatore

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