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Small acts of blindness
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What's the name of the boy who brings coffee? Aha! Got you there! What makes us selectively ignore some people, asks BAGESHREE S.
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One day, a little girl and her mom were travelling by auto. The girl found the word that preceded every one of her mom's instructions to the auto driver — "indhanga" — a bit intriguing. The untranslatable Tamil word, incidentally, is a neutral form of address a few grades more respectable than "you". And then she asked her mom: "Why do you call him that? Doesn't he have a name?" The mother stammered a bit and then explained how we meet a new auto driver every day and how we can't remember so many names. "But you can ask him what his name is as soon as you get into an auto, can't you?" she asked. "Yes, you could," the mother vaguely said and then changed the topic of conversation in embarrassment.
Later that night, the mom was trying to remember all the people who are part of her everyday interaction but remained no more than "ivre"s in her world of references. The gatekeeper, security guard, lift operator, cleaning woman in the office... And she couldn't come up with an excuse for not knowing their names like she could for the auto driver. Why were some people, only some people, no more than part of the blurry landscape as she rushed through her packed day?
London experience
It was during his stay in London that Indranil Datta, a software engineer, started introspecting on this habit of selective blindness. He was struck by how the director of the IT department of the bank he worked for always addressed the lift operator by his name. Once, he overheard the big boss ask after the health of the lift operator's daughter who, he gathered from the conversation, had been sick and had trouble going to school. The man, he also noticed, never forgot to hold the door open for the girl who came into his cabin with the food trolley.
It was this "strange" behaviour of the big boss that left Indranil asking himself the same question as the mom of our story. "For the director, the disparity in pay package did not come in the way of basic respect for another person."
It looks like the friendly director is more an aberration than the norm. Not just here, but everywhere else, if DeNeen L. Brown's article, Invisible workers, greeted by silence, in The Washington Post is any indication. He writes of the ever-busy white-collar workforce: "Shoulders hunch under the weight of purses and backpacks and coffee-cup balancing acts. Scowls and heavy thoughts push heads down. Cell phones are out, a plug in one ear, mouthpieces invisible, talking as if to the air. `Hey, how you doing?' they say it right before pushing the elevator button. The doors open and the `how you doing?' — a statement, not a question — is left sitting there with the security guard, the door attendant, the toll collector, the hot-dog vendor, the parking attendant... " Well, in most circumstances, even that "Hey, how you doing?" may never get asked.
How do those on the other side of this impenetrable, invisible wall look upon these acts of blindness? Ask K.V. Mohan, who works as a security officer in a private agency, and he will tell you a whole story not many have bothered to listen to. An ex-serviceman, he served in the Indian Army for 22 years and fought two wars for the country (in 1965 and 1971). He then worked in a public sector undertaking. At 60, he is a security guard because he "doesn't want to sit idle" and wants to "serve people in whatever way he can". He does have "feelings", he says, when people around him treat him like a "nobody" and are completely oblivious to his background, something he takes immense pride in. But then, he has learnt to take a philosophical view of things, and over a period of time, even enjoy meeting people of varied manners and moods.
Why don't we ever notice Mohan who watches us go by and actually knows all the employees of the organisation not just by their names but also by what they do? If you forget your bag in the parking lot, Mohan would, for instance, know whom it should be returned to. But the guy who gets back his bag is under no obligation to even say a courteous "thanks".
Obviously, there have always been clearly defined hierarchies in relationships which "allow" us to be blind to some people. But are we today turning more blind to them than ever before and in newer ways?
Yes, says mediaperson Siddharth N. "Whether I greet the gatekeeper or simply speed into the parking lot depends on factors such as how many traffic jams I have encountered on the way and how crazy my day ahead promises to be. On both counts, more often than not, I am in no mood to greet anyone when I reach office." But then he does know that he can "afford to" ignore only some people and not others. He wouldn't dare, for instance, not greet his senior in the organisation even if he's in the foulest of moods. "Let's admit it. Increasingly, we measure relationships by their usefulness. You run to the housekeeping staff and smile nicely when you realise you have dropped your car key somewhere on your way up. Who has the time for everyday courtesies or small talk unless they are PR exercises? So much so, when you are genuinely nice, people might think you are doing good PR!"
The larger economy
It may not be far off the mark to say that these attitudes are not just a matter of idiosyncrasies of human behaviour, but have something to do with the larger dynamics of the economy. All may not have been equal in the pre-labour reforms era, but there was at least one common ground an officer in an organisation shared with the peons and gatekeepers: they were all employees of one organisation. Designations and pay packets may have been different, but there were certain ground rules that applied to all. That surely allowed a greater sense of belonging.
Now, in all likelihood, the gatekeepers and the sweepers and the caterers will belong to three different hiring agencies, and being contract employees, change every now and then. Of course, you don't notice them change as you hurry past the gate or grab a quick coffee by the vending machine.
Says DeNeen further in his article: "It is said that the whole of the human story can be captured in the details of each day, the details of every life, the insignificant encounters, the what-ifs, the how-comes?" If so, what do our selective acts of blindness, deafness and muteness for a section of people say of the human story as we live it today?
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