There are a couple of things that Guha and I are always amazed about while walking around on the streets and while we potter around in book shops:
1. How incredibly clean the surroundings are (people tell me that it's very different in inner city neighborhoods, and while driving through some towns on the outskirts of Chicago - quite by accident, I wouldn't disagree) – nonetheless that doesn't take away from the great majority of surroundings, and not just posh, high class localities, that are clean and neat and incredibly well-kept.
2. How incredibly honest people are.
There seems to be a basic base-line level honesty and integrity amongst people in this country, which is unthinkable (as horribly disgusting and pathetic that happens to be) in India. Not to say that people don't steal or shoplift or that there aren't any instances of burglary or looting but that still in no way takes away from the base-line honesty that exists at an individual level in this country.
Bookshops here will often have neat stacks of books outside the shop-doors (no doubt to attract any potential passer-by who doesn't have any intentions of venturing inside the store). These books are normally ones that are on sale. People will browse through them, put them back from where they got it; if any book catches their fancy, they go in and buy it. I've never seen anyone running off with three books without paying for them. Never seen a huge van stopping right in front with a couple of hooded louts leaping out and throwing the boxes of books into the back of the van and then whizzing off. Haven't noticed any shifty eyed teenagers, stuffing some books into their trousers, giggling and snorting, and running off without paying. (Some things I have heard about and some odd things I have seen - but that's for another day).
Of course not. Then the system would fail to work.
Libraries are yet another amazing place. Both the university libraries as well as the public libraries. Now with certain rule changes - graduate students can take out books and keep them for as long as they are using them. The only thing they need to do is to renew the books every three months. And then of course one can take out as many books as one wants to, and one can roam around the stacks and pick out anything that looks or sounds interesting. I remember the first time that I went to one of the school libraries. I went to the counter and very softly and politely enquired, “How many books may I check out?” The lady behind the counter said with a smile, “As many as you can carry out, dear.” And of course I packed my bag full. I couldn't believe my luck. What if they changed the rules the very next day....!
In the school libraries: students and faculty check out the books on their own with a scanner. The only thing (and obviously I have thought about this a fair bit) that is there to prevent anyone from stealing a book is the barcode. That is all. Or so it seems. Rip out the barcode and walk away with the book, and nobody would be any wiser. But it almost never happens. I can't say it never does - because I don't know whether anyone has ever stolen a book from the library - but I do know that if people were stealing books with any regularity, then the system would not be able to sustain itself.
And obviously it's not just that little barcode, which prevents people from filching books.
Once, some years ago I had chanced upon this lovely book of poems. I seem to have forgotten the exact title – but I think it was called “Songs for Krishna”. This book had not been taken out of the library for ages. The last time it had been borrowed was in the 70s. I know this. For the book did not have a barcode. It had the library card tucked away in a slot on the back flap. I examined it, checked it, and was reading through some of the poems (many were by Meerabai), and I thought of taking the book and never bringing it back. Nobody would know. It wasn't even filed under the current system. Nobody even knew that the book actually existed anymore in the library, by the looks of it. It was a forgotten book lying on a library shelf, and I knew that I would read and re-read it many times more than it had been read in all the years that it had been there...
Another place where I've noticed basic honesty is in the school cafeteria (and other eating joints - especially coffee-shops and the like). In the school cafeteria - most main course meal items are served by the folks behind the counter. Yet one does have the option of picking up salads, fruit cups, desserts, bread, muffins, donuts, and bags of chips and the like, and then paying for them at the counter. Now the glass shelf where the muffins are kept, is miles away from where one pays, and I remember one year when I was rather hungry an awful lot (but certainly not starving or anything like that), I had seriously considered the possibility of pilfering a muffin. And not just once but on plenty of occasions. That whole “muffin-madness” had the usefulness of demonstrating some useful concepts when I was teaching social psychology and even the introductory classes a couple of years back...it never failed to make the students grin or guffaw or chuckle either.
Some weeks ago when Guha, Namrata, and I were sitting in the school cafeteria, we were talking about how polite and honest people are about using the condiments (which are “free”: jam, jellies, butter, milk for coffee, and about twenty different sauces and spreads and salad dressings). Namrata half-joked, “If this were back home, there would be a security guard monitoring the use of the tartar sauce, and he'd probably be paid less than it costs to buy a bottle of the same.”
I am reminded of some things:
How hordes of students from Presidency used to steal books every year from the Calcutta book fair. Far from being ashamed or embarrassed – they would boast about their exploits.
How a student once cut out pages from an expensive encyclopaedia in the National Library, and the news was carried in The Telegraph.
How terribly intrusive and heavy-handed the library system happens to be in India.
I could put ten other points that I am reminded of – but I intend to keep this post short.
About cleanliness, I'll write in another post.
....and it does make me wonder though. Why on earth are some folks so lazy about returning shopping-carts to their proper places! But about this oddity and others – some other day.
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