People watching – Part 1

The 60ish-year-old Tamil sari clad lady seated next to me on the bus whips out an iPhone from her mismatched bag and starts browsing the net.

When I grow up I want to be like her

Buses and monks…

Today on my way to work by bus I witnessed an incident, which made me quite angry. I was sitting two seats away from the first seat, which is usually reserved for the clergy. Since there was no clergy present at that time, a really old lady and a gentleman occupied that seat. Then a monk gets in, he looked about 17. The gentleman quickly got up and the old lady after much difficulty also got up. Monk sits; I immediately got up and offered the old lady my seat. I could have chosen to look the other way like so many other people, but unfortunately I knew that a guilty conscience is a difficult thing to live with. Getting back to the point, that was when my blood started to boil. I’ve always wondered why the monks/priests get the front seat no matter what the circumstances are. Have you ever seen a nun get a seat? I haven’t, they usually get one if a person with a good conscience offers them one otherwise they travel just like any other ‘ordinary’ person. If we are taught to respect our elders, shouldn’t the monk have been the first person to respect that old lady? Besides almost everyone on that bus serves God in his or her own way, why should the monk be treated any different just because he’s dressed in a robe?

The intention of this post is not to offend people but to figure out how all this started and why it is necessary to continue this age-old tradition when it makes no sense (at least for me).