At Darmstadt Hbf Park
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Today around 20:30, as always, I wanted to be alone, sitting and talking to myself. So, as I used to, I went to the park that's still coming up in front of my hostel. Though the park is yet to be completed, there are plenty of benches around for people to sit. I was sitting in one of them and talking to myself about my opinions on the article that I just read in FORTUNE about China's IP protection and the multi national companies views on it. To sum it up briefly, although China consists of 22% of world market today, it has 95% piracy. So, it means there is not enough IP protection, but surprisingly the counterfeit producs using another International brand, say Nike, is not at all bad and actually good if not the same as the original. So, the conclusion was, once china build's its own brands, it will become more active in safe guarding the Intellectual properties. I was talking about all this to myself.....and about 20 metres aways there was a man sitting...for me he was looking like a nomad and dressed as one. Whenever, I see these kind of people roaming around in streets in Germany, coming from a developing country, India, I used to wonder, why are these people roaming like a nomads despite having the gift of being born in a developed country like Germany. My justification for these kinda thinking was, either these people should be learned or of course can get some jobs if they want (my feeling was despite the record unemployment there are always enough jobs for people who genuinely try for it) or at the least would get money from the government for keeping themselves moving. Then , why are these people even roaming like this. As, I was thinking this, I suddenly noticed the man was approaching me. With all the obvious questions in my mind, I was waiting to see what's gona happen. This man came near to me and said, Hallo, Ich habe eine frage, (I have a question). and he continued in german and asked for some paper. Despite my german is not good and me having a good interest to learn it, I didn't respond this time as usual asking whether he speaks english. I wanted to manage this with my own german knowledge and also try to communicate with him in german. yea, he asked for paper and as usual I was carrying 2 papers for scribbling my thoughts and with all due respect to him, I communicated to him in my own german, I can give you half bcos I want the rest for my own use now (read scribbling). He replied, no, I dont want even half of it, a small bit will do for smoking this tobacco. Laughing at myself, I gave him a small bit of it and he said Danke schön (Thank you) and left back to his bench 20 m's away.
But, this left me with so many questions to ponder with. What he did was, he came to me and asked for a bit of paper with all due respect to me.I gave it to him and he thanked me and left. Fine and cool. You may be wondering what's there to ponder about. Well, I asked the same question to myself. The answer was, I am fine and really cool about what he did, but as an Indian I cant stop comparing the same with his Indian counterpart, not so learned and almost a nomad person. How is his behaviour different from his counterpart back home. His counterpart, back in India will almost do the same, but the difference is, I felt this person's thanks so genuine but I don't feel the same when his counter part thanks back home. Because, I as an Indian always have a feeling that his counterpart may go and bad mouth on back of me and that is a big MAY and such a possibility. But, I didnt feel the same with this person. What am I missing on here. Is it because even though I was living in Germany for around 2 yrs I dont understand Germany or its because these people are genuine in what they say. Should I blame it on cultural differences.
This left me with one conclusion. For all the people to respect all others no one should be deprived of basic necessities and I always have a feeling 99% persons of not so good people have been like that because they lack basic necessities of life and in their fight for their very existence they dont have respect for his fellow human's and their lives.
Praveen jothi
Posted byPraveen J at 9:20 PM
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I agree with your conclusion, though it sounds rather ideal.