The ground beneath his feet...

I have never really understood the concept behind 'judging' people or being 'judged' until today. Previously, whenever someone would say 'You're not going to judge me because of this, are you?' or something to that effect, I'd just nod or shake my head and hope that it would be the proper response.
Now, wait, hold on, before you strap that straight jacket on me and lock me in a padded room, atleast hear me out. I DO know what it means, but is'nt it kinda redundant? Or as Justin Seigel would say, ridonculous..one can't help NOT judge a person whenever they are witness to some action. Right? Turns out, the reality is never that simple and straightforward...but we'll get to that later.
So, anyway, I'm sitting in my favorite rickety old plastic chair at RS-yep, the romantic spot-, enjoying my hot plate of lentil curry and roti when I feel these eyes on me. Have you noticed how one can tell if somebody is staring at you and involuntarily you turn and look at them? So i look up and see this guy, about my age, in shalwar kameez that have seen better days and sandals that are almost run down to the bone. He doesn't look away when I catch him staring, and neither do I, for a while.
Finally, I cave and grin and give him the 'how-you-doin' head shake. He gives me the 'not-bad-how-about-yourself' shrug, and we both go back to our activities.At that moment, I finally realized what it feels like to be judged.
 And it was awful, i tell you.
 Maybe it was my office clothes and shoes that were making me stick out like a sore thumb amongst the rest of the customers of RS, almost exclusively labor class, drivers and bus conductors. Maybe it was due to my cuff links-I'm not a cuff link kinda guy, its just that I had been putting off doing my laundry for a while and I'd finally run out of clean shirts so that I had to wear one which didn't have buttons at the cuff, so sue me!- I don't know, but the whole experience of being judged made me re-assess a notion that has been circling the drain inside my head for a while now, refusing to be flushed away..But first some background as to why I had been feeling so vulnerable to judgments recently.
Last night I went out with my friend Moss and his brother after tennis. We decided to have some roll parathas from Jinnah Super Market-there's an amazing roll paratha stand,stall,whatever, just at the entrance to the market infront of the paan shop, its AMAZING, waayy better than the ones inside the 'gol market'- so after we had finished, I got out to throw away the wrappers. I have this habit of pretending to be Micheal Jordan whenever I see a trash can. I attempted a buzzer-beating three pointer from a couple of feet. It was a perfectly balanced throw and it was going to be 'nothing-but-the-net' had not this pathan boy walked in to the trajectory of my ballistic air missile.
I obviously didn't mean to hit him, but the boy looked at me as if I had done it intentionally, and the snickers from my friends and my appearance didn't help either. He looked me up and down while I apologized, albeit laughingly, and in retrospect, I'll be the first to admit, I did not make a convincing picture of remorse in my Air Jordans, and Puma windcheater and shorts. But I honestly did not mean to ridicule or humiliate him. However, I am pretty sure the pathan boy was not convinced of my sincerity and I'm afraid I had just verified all his pre-conceived notions about the them-versus-us divide.
That incident had been disturbing me all day, and I wondered if such little misinterpretations could build walls between people that would ultimately block out any sort of meaningful communication. And then this staring contest at RS happened, and the whole thing finally came full circle in my mind, or so I think.
We all judge.
We all make assumptions.
We don't bother to put ourselves in the other's place and think according to what they see. Instead we believe that there can only be just one way of looking at things, our way. And this is where we go wrong. And its not about class divide or privileged versus the under privileged. Its common all over. Let me try to explain.
When we look down upon those less privileged than us, we tend to feel sorry for them, because we feel that they are not happy and are missing out. I believe that happiness comes when one's basic needs, such as shelter, nutrition,love etc are met. They don't have to be a fancy five star location, a beds a beds a bed. So as long as one has those needs met, one can be happy. Everything else are just add-ons. They don't contribute directly to happiness or satisfaction, except to very shallow minds who can never have enough anyway.
This is why, it never made sense in my mind when somebody looked at street children playing in the rain and said 'aww poor kids, they don't even have video games or cool gadgets to play with'-nobody actually said exactly that, but you get my drift- and I wouldn't agree with them. Because I argued that they never had those things in the first place, so they don't miss them. For them happiness does not have a price tag.
Consider this, if Bill Gates were to look at me, would he feel sorry for me because I'm under-privileged and not happy since I don't have access to all the goodies he has?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we all need to come out of our comfort zones and our pre-determined mind sets and try to look at people and situations neutrally, if possible, from the perspective of the other person. And more often than not, the picture changes completely. That guy at RS judged me because of my appearance, and he made a judgment based on that. And its not his fault, we've all done that. I just wish that we would stop. And i hope i meet that pathan boy again to show that my three pointers really are not that bad, and neither am I..until then I'm going to keep eating paratha rolls, hoping for him to show up..preferably without a vest:p