Letter from a Concerned Reader | Columns

Why do Indians believe everything they are told, asks J. Mathrubootham

Respected Sir/Madam,

Please don’t get me wrong. I love Indians. First of all what choice is there, I can’t just go to some country without any Indians. There is any such country?

Once my dear friend Mr. Balaraman when to South America to go and see Machu Picchu. Poor fellow travelled day and night for god only knows how many days. He reached there, got out of the bus, walked up and down mountains and first thing he saw was one tour group of 30 or 40 Malayalis. I told him it was like going to Sabarimala but ten thousand times more expensive.

He got very upset at my joke, and for Diwali gift gave me socks.

So mostly, I am ok with Indian people. I live in Anna Nagar East. No problem with Indians here. Nice people. Cannot park car properly. But fine.

But sometimes, Indians can become unbearable. Just let me highlight one area of stupidity: Indians will believe anything. Tell them whatever nonsense you want with full confidence and Indians will immediately remove brain, put it in almirah, and believe the nonsense as if it is veda vakyam.

One day some idiot will say, “Oh my god there is one coconut tree behind my house and if you give it milk in plastic bowl, it is drinking! Oh this is miracle, miracle, miracle! Only ₹20 per person, come immediately.” Within five minutes, 4,000 people will be standing in line in front of the tree. (Separate line for VIP, ₹10 extra.)

Sir/ Madam, you will think only fools and idiots and ignorant people will be standing in line. What nonsense. Education and all who uses for thinking?

If you go and ask the first person standing in line to feed one bucket of milk to coconut tree, he will say with pride I have a Ph.D in Botany with double Masters in dairy engineering and plastic manufacturing.

In our country, education is nothing but one line in the bio data. Finished. If you ask M.A. Economics first-rank student what is the difference between ‘simple interest’ and ‘compound interest’, he will think for 10 minutes and say ‘spelling’.

Sir/ Madam, few days back you may have seen news of one boy in Chandigarh who it seems got job in Google as graphic designer. Immediately, I told Mrs. Mathrubootham, Kamalam, 100% something is suspicious about this news.

And then what happened two days later? Full duplicate news. My son laughed and laughed, but I told him shut up bloody fellow, other people are at least putting effort to get a fake job.

I don’t know if the boy did it or somebody forced him to create fake news. Whatever it is, I hope the boy is ok. Poor fellow.

Sir/ Madam, every few years some news like this will come. One year somebody will get job in Google. Then next year somebody will get scholarship to NASA. Then after two years somebody will show appointment order from Microsoft. All chicanery. But every single newspaper and TV channel in the country will report this without even checking a single thing.

Sir/ Madam, have you seen the letter from Google the Chandigarh fellow showed his school principal? Ok, I am not Kaun Banega Crorepati or Einstein or C.V. Raman. But even I could see it was total nonsense.

Why Indians are like this? People in this country are just dying to believe in anything. You just take a nice printout of anything on white paper, give it one lamination, and then just show it to everybody with confidence. Within 24 hours, you will be on English news channel. After 48 hours, you will get award from Chief Minister. And then you continue like that for 20 or 30 years, and you can become Chief Minister yourself.

How will this end? One day somebody will just print some nonsense and give it to public sector bank and take lakhs and lakhs of loan and then disappear.

Ok, maybe this is already happening.

Yours in exasperation,

J. Mathrubootham

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Printable version | May 7, 2021 12:01:01 PM | https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/who-uses-education-for-thinking/article19523882.ece

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