When in Rome, do as the Romans do!!

When in Rome, do as the Romans’ do!! This reminded me of my trip to Singapore way back in 2010. It was way past midnight and we were returning back to our hotel after our super awesome club hopping stint at Clarke Quay. There was an overdose of excitement indeed, one from being recently married and second of, having danced my heart away, with the excitement at almost the top notch level I began crossing the street which was almost deserted and someone zoomed past me at that very moment, almost hurling abuses at me.

Phew!! The excitement was gone and common sense prevailed. I realised that I had tried to cross the road when the pedestrian crossing sign was red which meant I had to wait for the pedestrian signal to turn to green to be able to cross the road.

I stayed in Singapore for 5 days and after that one incident, I swore to abide by all the rules because I wanted to return home intact and without any legal remarks on my passport.

The rule abiding series continued while I visited various other countries like Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.

The one common thing amongst these countries was that they had all their rules listed down at least at one place at the airport, a place where it was visible to all the travellers. The other common thing was that I was also an Asian visiting these countries as a tourist.

India is a beautiful country, it has some breath taking and enthralling views. The diverse culture and an even diverse cuisine makes it to, I guess one of the top countries a traveller would want to explore.

The thing that bothers me is that why as a citizen of this country not all of us are law abiding citizens. Sometimes we overlook a simple thing as littering. We want our children to learn good things, we send them to international schools, we ourselves work for corporates and multinational companies however we seldom fail to inculcate the elementary civic sense.

Having worked with a multinational company myself, I have seen and experienced the sheer joy and exhilaration on having a colleague from a foreign country visit you. We go all out of our way to make them feel comfortable and ensure we do everything right to strike the perfect impression. We also have our immaculate manners and sense of humour at display.

If only we did the right things even when no one was watching. If only we abided by certain rules!

So what if no one else complied, at least you know, you complied! You would know you did the right thing when no one else did. I read somewhere, freedom meant, doing the right thing even when no one was watching. We wouldn’t have too many things left to pass on to our future generations considering the technological advancements and shrinkage of the environment. We would hopefully have taught them to see and practice the righteousness in doing a certain task.