Pay role number or Personality?

A visit to the supermarket. Nothing special. I just went to the usual place and bought usual things. With my basket full of things I waited at the cash counter for my turn. After paying I took my basket to the counter, where they check the billed items with the items in the basket and put your purchase in shopping bags. This is a quite slow process, I feel. Many a times, it had cost me lots of patience to still take the shopping bags from the girl at the counter with a smile. That day, while waiting I used the time to have a closer look at the girl. Young she was, she did her work slowly and concentrated. She was wearing a maroon colour overcoat like all employees. When I had almost turned my attention to something else, I suddenly noticed the badge pinned at the coat. I focused my eyes and read:

May I help You
No. 123

The usual shopping routine was disturbed. How ironic to keep a badge, which on the one hand offered personalized help to the customer, but on the other hand had the help come from a number. Number 123. It sounded more like a tag for a machine, a robot, but not for a human being.
A recent piece of information came back to my mind. Someone had talked to these young girls working at the supermarket. And they had told her, how they were all staying together in a dormitory, had very few leave days, and got a meagre salary for all this hardship.
Such working conditions are not an individual case. When a fire had struck a huge shop in Chennai one night and an employee died in the flames, the newspapers suddenly reported about very similar working conditions to those of the supermarket girls in Kerala.
When I read about it at that time, I was convinced that it was a phenomenon of big cities, never thought of the possibility of similar working conditions in tiny towns in Kerala. But it seems a much more common phenomenon. Ironically, this supermarket even belongs to a chain, whose concept is to offer consumer-friendly prices, below the maximum retail price. But this concept unfortunately does not seem to include an alternative approach to employment conditions.

The girl handed over my shopping bags to me. This time it wasn’t difficult to give her a smile and a thank you, despite her not having been the fastest that day either. I tried to interact with her as a person, and not a mere number.

On the Road with Comrade, UFO and the Holy Family

Comparing the public transport, I must say that especially rural areas definitely have a better connectivity in Kerala than in Germany. It is a quite easy and well organized means of transport to get around various places in Kerala. Of course, the comfort of the travel is debatable: To get a seat you have to be either lucky or traveling at the right time (the noon heat, when no one else is interested to spend time on a bus for example); whether you have to share a small bench with a woman, who is equally round as you, is still a question – in most cases your knees will anyway suffer if your height is more than 1,5 m since the benches are arranged so close to each other in order to save space. If you don’t catch a seat, your height will again decide about your travel comfort, the taller you are the more you will sway around the poles, you are desperately hanging on to, at every turn or pothole.

Anyway, before entering the bus you need to know some basic hints: In Kerala you find the Kerala State Road and Transport Corporation (KSRTC) busses and the busses operated by various private parties. The KSRTC busses are easily recognizable because of their bright red color. Private busses are much more individual and creative in their design. Apart from various color variations, the most striking aspect of them are their names: Very popular are St. Mary, St. George, St. Jude and other saints, or -in one go- the (entire) Holy Family, Fatimah, or Lakshmi as reflections of faith. Lulu’s and A. Brothers’ seem rather reminiscence of ownership. But then you have the truly creative ones: Comrade (any political affinities?), Passenger (thought those were inside?), UFO (any relation to the driving style?), Galaxy (safely to the next town would be enough for me!) – to name just a selected few.

A last one, essential to survive in Kerala busses: Bus travel is a gender sensitive issue. Before entering the bus, one should find out the seating arrangements – are the women (who still get usually less space allotted in busses) seated in the front or back of the bus? Mostly, for KSRTC busses the women’s seats will be in the back, while for private busses they will be in the front. But exceptions from the rule are always possible. Negligence can make the journey either way uncomfortable – women might have to bear the stares and what not all trying to survive in the men’s section, while men have to fear the almost violent action taken by women to secure their space.

I am marrying a family – part II / Ich heirate eine Familie – 2. Teil

Last Sunday a small scene finally convinced me to have a few words on an amusing fact about different cultural concepts:

Scene no. 1 – Years ago, me still an innocent newcomer to India, I tried to engage in small talk with a small girl at a children’s camp. I asked her, how many brothers and sisters she had. She replied promptly: 12! After overcoming my initial shock, I tried to ask, how many of them were boys and how many girls. Then the girl started explaining: Alice Aunty has 2 boys and 1 girl. Beena Aunty has 2 girls. …What an insight to an astonished German student!

Scene no. 2 – Last Sunday I am introduced to a youth member in a church. While we are talking another young man enters into the circle and starts engaging in the conversation. Pradeep just mentions, that it is his brother. For a split second my mind goes off the conversation and on to notice the striking difference in the two people’s appearance. But ok, siblings can look different, can’t they. A minute later, another young man comes and stands on the other side of him, and again, he just says, “This is my other brother.” This time I can’t help it but my mind seriously rebels, since the third one again doesn’t seem to have anything in common with either of the previous 2 people.
Just when I started to try and come to terms with this amazing dissimilarity among siblings, the information became complete: the one was a maternal cousin brother and the other a cousin of the paternal side. Relief for the tortured German soul!

It is quite striking how different cultural concepts are so deeply rooted in a person that even after many years, I was still not prepared that the word ‘brother’ could be used in any other sense than for an own brother, born by the same mother.
On the other hand, I must say that in many cases I also wonder whether the relation between first cousins is always so intense and close as a relation between own siblings. At least in my case, I can say that the relation between me and my cousins comes in no way close to the relation I share with my siblings. Therefore, I still feel a hesitation to extend the use of the word to other than one’s own sisters and brothers.

(Zusammenfassung: Ein junger Mann stellt mir zwei andere junge Männer als seine Brüder vor. Die drei sehen so unterschiedlich aus, dass ich erleichtert bin, als schließlich klar wird, es sind Cousins. Ein junges Mädchen erzählt mir von ihren 12 Geschwistern, die sich schliesslich auch als die Kinder ihrer Tanten entpuppen. Ich bin so daran gewöhnt, dass Bruder und Schwester immer leibliche Geschwister bezeichnet, dass es mir schwerfällt, mich von dieser weitergefassten Verwendung nicht irreführen zu lassen.)