It was this incident that has made me think in this way. I and my friends were on a trip to Agra with our foreigner friend and on the way back a kid comes along trying to sell his snow-globes. His prime target had, from the first word he uttered, been our foreigner friend. Now our friend does not want to buy it, and tries to escape the kid. We, with the linguistic advantage, started to interfere and trying to save our friend. My friend pointing me asks the kid to talk to me instead of the foreigner. In reply, he says “He’s got no money, but this friend – he’s got the money”. Come on, that was harsh! Again my foreigner friend offered him some money, now the kid-businessman doesn’t take much time replying “I am not a beggar”! Arrogant! Yet he got the kid’s consideration to be forgiven.

We took it as a really good humour at the time, but later on I started having this thought in my mind why he did not think once before uttering such a thing? Though his smartness is appreciable, I thought these are more than what you could say to one of the guests. Where is our culture that treated guest as God himself? Still remaining in hearts of some of us, have we made a flaw passing our culture into our future generations? I am not really passing any comment against all, but it certainly is a flaw from our side if our younger generation is unaware of our cultural wealth! We are one of the oldest civilizations and owners of a rich and wealthy cultural heritage and this asset should be passed on to our descendants. Parents should be responsible for this within the home, but in a way or the other, each one of us hold responsibility for this since we are part of this society.