India, Bangladesh: Being Rude
Written byNeha Viswanathan
Mezba ponders on the Reader's Digest survey on cities and politness, picking out the aspects that become culturally irrelevant. He talks about being polite to shop-keepers “Well, the last time a few British came to India to do a little bit of trade. They came to Bengal too, under Robert Clive. Some company called the East India Trading Company. We said thank you. They liked it so much that they remained for 400 years. So we don't do it anymore.”
Written byNeha Viswanathan
1 comment
Reader’s Digest is a magazine for the very very average mind.
There is absolutely no way that New York is the most polite city in the world. There is absolutely no way Paris is ranked one of the most courteous. Have those surveyors been to a bank or a department store in Paris? Parisians do not know the meaning of the word “service”.
Did that magazine surveyor come to Tokyo? The Japanese are the most polite people in the universe. Tokyo is not even on their list so how can they make these smug conclusions on incomplete data?
You cannot base the meaning of “politeness” on picking up papers and opening doors. The Reader’s Digest criteria is so crude.