Remember in school when the teachers are always demanding good behaviour? Especially when we go outside somewhere on a fieldtrip or picnic? Always there is the nag of being ‘respectable little kids’ by keeping our appearances tidy and maintaining our decibels. On my last travel trip I got a first hand account of what a difference in impression these things make on an outsider!

Traveling & working is fun and something I really enjoy! But it gets tiring. Often I may fall sick from the food or travel and yet have to work! Also amongst everything else I try and squeeze in some actual city exploring! In all this stuff going on, the last time at YHAI hostel in Mysore I stayed with two different groups of people.

First was the alcoholics group. So as usual in a dorm the rules say that after a certain time lights must be out, but in India no one really follows these rules! So these folks kept chabbering and talking in their usual volume. A few of them slept. I knew this was their last day and they would be going their separate ways so I figured a lot of them wanna chat a lot! A lot of the women were nice they told me number of times that they would be disturbing me with their talking don’t mind 🙂 This showed that they were sensitive to the sleeping folk. They took care of all lights when leaving the room early in the morning!

Second was now a bunch of girls from some south east asian country – the chinese looking lot but they could have been from korea too.. These people really surprised me! I was down with a headache and sleeping when they came in at 7.oopm! The moment they saw me they started Shhh.. Shhh ing their friends until none of them was talking. They very quietly went about their stuff. Every time someone spoke loudly the others would Shhh.. them! Someone dropped something from top on my bunk and immediately apologized! It was brilliant and they actually maintained this silence till the next day cause I just slept straight from 7 to next morning in my feverish daze! They also took care of the fans, lights and all that before leaving the room!

Third was the worst behaved lot everrr! I mean me and my friend were so tired but these girls from some small town kept screaming till atleast 2 in the night! I had to wake up and yell at them twice it had only a very short term effect after which they started screaming again! And I mean Screaming not talking loudly – SCREAMING on top of their voices! It was so bad… I mean just the sheer lack of consideration especially the experience with the korean group being fresh in my mind! The sound was not all, they had to leave at 5 in the morning so even while waking up and getting ready they made a real loud ruckus but they actually left all the lights ON. Every single one of them!! I mean in the room of 50 there were just two girls me and another sleeping with every single tubelight ON! And these girls don’t have the freakin sense to close them!! WTF!

So really this was really the first time I saw such a range of behaviour! And it has made me think about the average Indian person on the road and his/her behaviour! Since then I have been noticing so many things like people in crowded trains who keep their legs jutting out so everyone has to brush it before entering, the lack of an apology when people bump into you…. I used to think that I am one of the few who actually look at how my actions are affecting people around me and seeing to their comforts too but maybe in some of the countries abroad things may be a lot more better in terms of general mass behaviour.

I now really want to travel to other countries….