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| Sunday, 26 March 2006 |
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Nosey parkers dissin' the system - by rikki Have you ever noticed how much of your personal information Sri Lankans want to know? Visualise the meeting of two Lankan strangers. After they've told each other their full names and other basic local formalities, the most important question that they ask each other is their age. How old are you? A person's age is very personal, an asset or a liability depending on whom one has divulged the information to. While a prospective employer has all right to know the date of birth, the stranger you happen to have a conversation with in the local library will also insist on time of birth, star signs and so on. Of course once the what is supposed to be awkward barrier of age has been crossed (haven't really seen Sri Lankans who feel uncomfortable asking you your age) they will get on to other matters such as school, examinations passed and what you scored on them, your family, parents' occupation, your personal financial status. They'd probably even ask you for your mobile phone and have a little look see. There are others who in an attempt to portray a polite conversation on their part will not pop the inquisitive questions straight at your face with a look of curiosity but instead veil them behind other questions that will lead them towards what they need to know anyways. For example: your travelling companion will ask you when you got married, the age you got married and will only in this instance put to use his mathematical skills to calculate your approximate age, or will do so by asking you how long you have been working and when you joined. Strangers and mere acquaintances apart, even teachers in schools engage in this kind of shit. They call up their students and interrogate them about their family, what the breadwinner does for a living and even try to gauge from the answers they receive how much the family income is. No wonder kids don't have respect for most of their teachers these days. And then there is the old stand-by: relatives. Yes, local family get-togethers always involve questions that are put to each other regarding their personal lives and the discussion of the answers. While most fathers discuss politics and try upping each other on their kids' achievements, coming up with total falsehoods sometimes, the mothers, the aunties and the grand moms huddle together to discuss how their kids' personal lives are progressing. When it comes to teenagers, it always harbours on puberty and adolescence. The young teens are called and queried about the frequency and flow of their period, the sanitary napkins they use, the strength of the stomach cramps they experience and the food they eat. This is extremely embarrassing to a new adolescent to whom the changes of burgeoning adulthood have not been explained clearly. It is also quite frankly not any one's business but only perhaps between mother and daughter. And if the boys think they don't get discussed, well you're wrong. There are mothers out there who in whispers discuss the cracking of their boy's voice, the frequent change of sheets and so on. What I cannot even begin to understand is why such nosey parkers try their utmost to find as much s they can about other people they both know and don't know. Is it a means of getting through the monotony of their lives? Is it a
mutant gene to be found in most Sri Lankans? I don't know and don't care,
as long as they leave my life out of it. Unfortunately they don't, so I
hope all you real nosey people out there lose all of your senses. |
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