The Night train from Berlin to Paris is a lot like our Indian trains. There are cubicles for 6 people to sit. Those of you who have seen Eurotrip will recognize it as the one where Mr 'Miscuzzi' gets in. So in my cubicle there were only two people apart from me. A white French girl and a white Brazilian boy. There is a reason why I mention 'white' which will soon become apparent. The ticket checker had already come by and it was getting late. So we switched off the lights and drew the blinds. It had been a long day and I immediately fell sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, I was rudely awakened when a man walked into our cubicle and switched on the lights. It was guy from the 'Polizei' and he was asking us for our passports. He checked mine first and for the other two he just waved his hand and said "It's ok" and summarily left.
All done and I was ready to go back to sleep when I notice that the others were staring at me. The Brazilian looks at the French girl and says "I can't believe he just did that..!!" and then continues looking at me with a mixture of concern and disgust. But what did I do? The French girl then says "It's just not fair, this is discrimination". Then slowly it dawns on me that they were referring to the policeman. Sometimes you need foreigners to give you a rude awakening.
23 comments:
On Indian trains you don't get woken up for your passport :D
Kaushik
hahahaha... :D
good one...
its kinda sad to actually have an experience like that. kinda unnerving in a way. can only imagine how it must hav felt. :S
good to share this.
@Ashish
Well that's the thing, I didn't feel anything at all..
Until, I really thought about it the next day. and wrote a blog .. :)
dude.. very common man ..! happens pretty often in europe .. esp in places like france/germany .. hav myself faced such situations ! good blog ! :)
@Karan...
I guess so. that's why i haven't really taken it to heart. But the others in the compartment did for some reason.. :P
reminds me of one of my many kelas..
i was travelling without ticket(long story why) in tambiland with my friends..
tt: where is the ticket
we: we dont have it sir..
the guard goes away and we were extremely amazed at the cool attitutde..
tt reappears just before the last stop(music fx: tantadan)
accompanied by a police
tt: you have to come with me..
(lets not get into details)
summary: almost made it to sasural and didnt even have money to pay the 1300 bucks fine slapped..
that day i was convinced that god exists(to have gotten us out of the deep deadly shit)
@ basu ...
hey must have been toug on you...
I'll tell you the truth.
In a land of dravidians I was one of only 3 aryan descent people. The other two were spoiled brats and we all sat in different benches on the last row of class. I was always suspected of being an abettor. Not true. But do I go around suing the school? Apparently not.
People of asian descent (aryan, dravidian or mongoloid, as in this case) are responsible for a LOT of terror activities, in all continents. So was it wrong on the part of the policeman? He wasn't forceful. He did not overkill. He just asked for you passport, woke you up maybe.
And you not feeling anything was perfect. There is nothing to 'feel'. A man with no prejudices has to look hard to see prejudice.
P.S: More of a blog post than a comment i reckon. :D
@ madan
Totally agree with you man. It's the stereotype that Asians have fallen into.
The guy was just doing his job.
i was SO going to say exactly the same thing like madman did...though i have one more point...
if ur on an indian train, and suppose for now that theyre doing passport checks (in, say, Nasik)...
Do you think they'd check ur passport? Obviously not! they'll "know" ur indian and ask the firangs or the chinkis! it's kinda natural eh?
so apart from the stereotype, it anyway makes sense (though the stereotype argument works better here coz there was a brazilian there as well)
woah woah...!!!!
please people dessist from any further hatred. This blog careened off in a very dangerous direction. I dont want this to be a hotbed of controversy anymore.
No more posts here.
See this is the sort of unfortunate incident that I would really want to avoid. I am enabling comment moderation from now on.
Visit http://www.indiantrains.org/
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