The Incident

Picture this. You are in a completely new country for a week and went out to a barbeque restaurant to eat some food. You get a table squeezed in a corner. On another table complete strangers from Germany, Japan and US are having their food. One of them just starts a conversation and basic usual stuff of introductions, where and how. About half an hour later these folks on the table start leaving and one of them just comes over to your table and starts a conversation about a language app that may be very useful in India as there are multiple native languages that people speak. That person asks for your mobile phone just to show the name of the application. It seemed awkward but what do you do, just give your phone and that person types in something and gives you back. What I see is a website talking about a specific religion? Now I don’t have any issue reading about any particular religion or getting into discussion about it. I would rather like to learn. 

I would leave the country, the gender of that person, religion and life purpose for readers to wonder. But it was a shock for me.

The point that I am trying to make is why this person who seemed to be from a well educated background had to lie to pursue something like evangelizing religion. The person knows that this is first and last time that we are meeting and how a link to a website will influence in any ways.

What I felt!

Today the world is divided more than ever politically, economically, gender, religion and what not. People with such backgrounds are still entangled with proselytizing unknown people which was the basis of lot of conquests and invasions in the history of humankind. 

This person, I believe, was not a clergy whose job was to get people into their fold. The world needs to see less of divisive philosophies. Equality, liberty and fraternity are not valid only when everyone is in the same team rather it encompasses everyone who are not on the team. The world will not be as beautiful if it was inhabited by just humans, was only grasslands, was only one thing and wasn’t this diverse.

The world today needs people who a patient enough to listen to the divergent views. There is a need to look beyond your team and build those bridges where there can be common good. Diversity wouldn’t have survived evolution if it was not superior.

Have you faced something like this ever. What would you have done?

There is Carl Sagan’s lecture where he coined the term “pale blue dot” and the what he said about it something that seems like the antidote to anything this and here is picture of the same