This story occurred a long time ago. There might be some reduction as well as addition because I am not good at recalling the past. The situation in this story has changed a lot now.
I used to have two close friends who happened to live in the same neighborhood. Wherever we went, we went together. People called us “ three musketeers”. We were single women who “should have been married at our ages”. People kept asking who our boyfriends were and when we would get married. Luckily, we did not give a damn to what the society thought of us. We just enjoyed our friendship and being single.
Three of us had different backgrounds of family. My oldest friend, Tacik, came from a modest family living in a small house. Her dad was self-employed. He sewed to earn for living. Her mother was a housewife. Her family was people with great self-integrity. When we had a celebration of the independence day, she and her sisters were easy to come to the stage and sing. Tacik was nearly always the master of ceremony. She was a nice, brilliant as well as great confident person. She was the smartest one among us despite her lowest background of education. She dedicated her life as a private teacher for math, physic and later on English.
My second friend named Dyah. She was the richest. Her father was a government officer in the Commerce and Industry Chamber. Her mother was a teacher. Her house was full of furniture that I always admired. She was a nice and humble person. She never looked down the poor. In my eyes, her life was full of blessing except one thing. She remained jobless for more than three years while her two friends had found jobs to earn money.
I myself did not grow up from a wealthy family. We lived in a plain house. My father was a labor. He worked in a construction company. With a little salary he tried to support our family which consisted of seven persons. My mother was a housewife. By his extremely hard work, my dad could send some of his children to university. I was the only child who obtained a bachelor degree. My elder sister dropped out and my younger brother only got a diploma. Thanks God, I was blessed with the easiness to find a job after the graduation day. I worked in a big company as a staff of human resources department. Later, I became a lecturer.
Despite our differences, we shared the same condition- living in a slum area. Our neighborhood was very crowded. The houses was separated by a small path that a car could not pass through it. People put their washing lines in front of the houses. They sat and talked at the sides of the path. In short, our neighborhood was a typical of slums. Living in a such area, each of us ever underwent an unpleasant experience Here goes the story.
One day, Dyah was introduced to one of her uncle’s colleagues. From his appearance, he was a gentleman from a wealthy and aristocratic family. When he came to her house, he happened to see some children having natural calls on the small ditch across her house. Dyah told us that the man looked very uncomfortable seeing that view. Though Dyah’s house was the best of all, its surrounding was dirty and the most crowded. Chicken and dog waste was scattered on the path. The gentleman did not feel comfortable staying and talking to her. Instead of finding out how a nice and kind girl Dyah was, he left some minutes later with shocked and disappointed look.
The similar thing happened to me. Being a lecturer and having a mobile phone often made people took for granted that I was a well-financially supported girl. One day one of my colleagues introduced me to her university friends by phone. He was a student of a master program. We had a nice talk and he so often called me. Then the day he insisted on seeing me in person came. He wanted to ask me out for lunch. He did come to my house. I could see clearly his disappointment that I was not as pretty and rich as he thought. He kept talking about my “shocking” small house and slum neighborhood. At last he cancelled asking me out for lunch. He said he had some work to do. I had already predicted that this would happen, and I anticipated this by saying “Well. It’s okay. I’ve got to go to somewhere else too”. Then he left. I stared at his leaving. I laughed at him cynically- how snobbish he was. Suddenly I felt that it was not wise to laughed at him (though I know I laughed at him as a compensation of my bitterness of being looked down). At last a pity rose in my heart. It is a pity that such an educated person still has a narrow mind. Anyway, it is not wise for me to blame him solely on his snobbery, right?. He is a product of society. People around him may have indoctrinated him with such an attitude. Well, I just hope that he will start to use his common sense as well as conscience to see this world and later on may change his attitude one day.
Among three us, Tacik had the most admirers due to her brilliance. Yet, she often refused her admirers to come to her small house. Once, she fell in love deeply with a gorgeous and rich man. From her story (if I am not mistaken), his mother was a sort of woman who concerned a lot with nobility. My friend realized that she was not the type of girl she expected to be her daughter-in-law. She always refused her beloved man to come to her house. She was afraid that he would be shocked (just like the other two men I told before).
Well, this is the reality. Though egalitarian spirit has spread nearly all over the world, this snobbery still happens everywhere, I suppose. Some rich people still do not feel comfortable to mingle with the poor, and the noble do not wish to have the common as the member of their family. Some people still put physical beauty to the top place that they are reluctant to deal with “not beautiful ones”. The worse thing is when smart people look down others whom they think are not as smart as them. Here, something lies beneath richness, nobility, intelligence. It is wisdom.
* I rewrote this story as I remembered two things. First, one of my smart friends’ experience when she was about to teach English to male adults ( they were educated people). She was in partner with her colleague who happened to be more beautiful than her. The male adults spontaneously and (in her opinion) rudely pointed her beautiful colleague to be their teacher. My friend felt hurt. Though at last she taught the students as she was a real smart teacher, the first day experience really irritated her.
Second, I saw some of my friends start to discover their potential of being smart. Unfortunately, they start to humiliate others whom they think are not smart. When one of them humiliated her former lecturer by saying that her English was bad, I was really shocked. How proud she was with her English! While in my opinion the lecturer was a qualified one and her English was much better than hers. Being confident doesn’t have to be proud, right? Anyway, I am deeply impressed by Gayatri Spivak (an Indian scholar) who has gained worldly fame but she is always humble.
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