are you safe?

Sometime back I met an NRI, online acquaintance when he was here in India for a short trip. While fixing the meeting time and venue, I noticed that he was using a hired taxi as his transport in Bangalore. My middleclass mind asked him why he wasn’t using auto-rickshaw or something instead of expensive taxi. The answer I got from him was pretty interesting.

He said he didn’t feel safe traveling in ricks in Bangalore, or something to that gist. He felt insecure and unsafe in India. He said, “I am nothing here except for few hundreds or thousands in my pocket”. I remember that sentence very clearly. He didn’t believe rick drivers, and thought they might take him for as ride.

For some strange reason these things I got from an NRI didn’t go off my memory. I could brush it off with other common NRI symptoms, like not drinking normal drinking water, etc but I thought this particular thing was bit strange. There is nothing important in an NRI taking a taxi for all his commute as he can afford it, but getting scared to interact with the common crowd is something else.

When we go to a new place obviously we are bit concerned. But does it happen when you come back home? I felt quite safe even in Iran. This NRI knows India very well; it’s his home. Why he has to feel insecure here? Is it strange of him, or is India really scary?

Somehow, I thought of this guy when I heard about the tragedy at Virginia Tech.