There are some incidents in life that you wish you could undo. Unless you can travel faster than the speed of light, it is virtually impossible. I was 15 then, you could say that I was childish, immature, well I was only FIFTEEN, how much of an EQ can you expect a 15 year old to have? Or rather how much of an understanding of intercultural differences can you expect a 15 year old to have? Again the incident that I am going to narrate did happen.
There was this Singh in my class who goes by the name of Rajiv. He always had this massive turban on his head. (The Singh population in Singapore is predominantly Sikh) Needless to say, he was literally the entertainment icon of the class, not by his own will of course. In fact he hated it. I was often behind the cruel and insensitive jokes that were made of him, in front of him. From nicknames like the “turbanator” to jokes about how bad his body odor was. My class even had cash bets to see who could predict the color of his turban for the next academic day and I was the bookie! Rajiv didn’t seem to react much to the jokes that we make about him apart from the occasional “will you guys just shut up” thus none of us really bothered to find out that it is actually a culture of the male Singhs to not cut their hair and hence the only way they could keep it neat is to tie them up in a turban. Rajiv did not turn up on the first day of school after the mid-term holidays. At first everyone thought that he was sick, however he did not turn up for school the following day and the next. He did not turn up for school for a whole week. We were in for a shocking revelation. The principal of my school paid a visit to his home to check on his whereabouts and he came to realize that Rajiv had been missing school intentionally. Apparently, according to his mum, Rajiv came home crying every day after school, he would then hide in his room and only come whenever he needs to bathe. He would also take several showers a day and whenever he came out of the shower, his skin was often red and sore, sometimes bleeding. At first she ( Rajiv’s mum) thought that he was just having a allergic reaction to something he ate in school however she soon realized that he was actually bleeding because he was washing himself with chlorine to get rid of his body odor. Chlorine is a mildly corrosive liquid used to wash toilets. When she and her husband knew what was happening, they immediately pulled him out of school and enrolled him for counseling sessions. They later found out he was in this state because of the insensitive jokes that were made of him in class over a long period of time.
When I heard this, I was overwhelmed with remorse. Why was I so insensitive in the first place? Why did I not appreciate the cultural differences between me and him? All this while, I had been ruining someone’s life without knowing it. Sometimes I wish that by some stroke of luck I could meet him again and tell him how sorry I was for everything that I did.
5 comments:
This is a very honest discussion, Timothy, and I appreciate that. My daughter---a primary 6 student at a local school---tells me similar stories related to bullying and rudeness that shock me. Your offensive, immature behavior at that age might be more common than people imagine.
From the outside, Singapore has a reputation of being a society where behavior is more highly controlled, and where "bad" behavior is rare. I now know that such is not the case.
My question is related to education: Why weren't you checked? Where was the teacher in all these episodes? Rajiv or his parents should have complained, and you should have been confronted, counseled and, if the torturing continued, perhaps punished.
Where are the parents in these cases? Don't Singaporean parents try to inculcate in their children values of egalitarianism, the brotherhood of humans and politeness?
Or were you just the "bad" kid?
Anyway, I'm glad to see you have been "reformed."
How did that come about? What were the factors that turned you around?
Hi Timothy,
That is indeed a rather sad story that you shared. I am feeling though that it is less of a cultural conflict and more of a peer pressure in conforming to the standard of the rest.
If the situation was to be reversed, in that the majority of the class comprised of Sikhs, would there still be jokes on the turbans and the body odors? Most assuredly not, I would think.
By nature, when one is different from the rest, that person will receive extra attention, good and bad. Most likely then the teasing was not ill-intentioned, but it was still cruel and caused pain, outcast-ing further someone who was already different from the rest.
Things like these will pass though, as we grow older and more mature. Or at the very least, we will be more discrete about it. It is the everlasting regret that we must face when we look back, and the first step to resolve that is to understand and forgive oneself.
i originally typed out the whole essay on microsoft word and it turned out to be close to a 1300 words. i didn't realize i was writing so much oops. Tried to edit it as best as i could. i excluded the emotions of the teachers and parents as i thought the purpose of this blog post was the highlight the issues arising from inter cultural differences. That being said, ill include the reactions, of the teacher, parents as well as the emotional punishments that i went through in a separate post :)
Hello=]
Thank goodness, such "full force" bullying has not occurred in the schools that I've been in. Yes, there has been instances of people being teased, or sometimes being left out from conversations, etc, but nothing too serious to cause such trauma. I guess sometimes when we are in a crowd, we tend to get carried away in the heat of the moment. But sometimes, we've just got to take a step back and think about how you would feel if you were being treated in such a manner..
Heyhey....Oh no.. this is really a rather in fact I would think a super sad and terrible incident. As kids and teenagers, we tend to be more playful and insensitive to people around us. Sometimes we do not know what we have done will have a huge impact on others. I guess we tend to get carried away from all that fun of teasing that we neglect how others are feeling. I am also guilty of that. =( Hah.
I also played lots of pranks and done alot of teasing to those people who are being ostracised. Thinking back about it, I do feel quite bad sometimes. I mean if I'm in their shoes, the experience will be extremely horrible. Whenever I want to do such things these days, I'll always remind myself that there'll be karma....so I'll try to stop harbouring such evil notions.
Anyhow I hope you're feeling better about this and that your singh ex-classmate is doing well now. Maybe you should send him a card or sth. Just a suggestion!
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