You can be rich and considerate; try it!
In India, the economic middle class practically doesn’t exist, only the cultural middle class does. The upper caste who had the privilege of getting educated sooner than others is today’s middle class. But that’s not the point of this blog post. This is to be extremely petty and describe one incident, and, at the same time, share some pictures from our weekend getaway without going on Instagram because it’s for losers (?)
We’re in Coonoor for a weekend trip because we finally have leaves to make a long weekend slightly longer. Even though we look down on touristy things, museums are my favourite! That’s what we did — exploring the museums. Also, what’s wrong with touristy things? If you can support the local economy by spending 50 rupees on a ticket to a park, do it! It’s just that you don’t want to see a lot of people when you’re trying to run away from bustling cities. But luckily not many people are into museums. You can see them clicking pictures around gazebos but hardly in museums or even in the woods (or maybe they do and die).
Our first stop was Lamb’s rock, named after the Colonel who used it as a vantage point. Right at the beginning, a guy offered to be our tour guide and we thought we could use a guide, because a rock is a rock if you pass it on your own but it’s a special rock when you find out that Tipu Sultan did something with it, it holds some value. Through Lamb’s rock we could almost see two borders, Karnataka/TN and Kerala/TN. Kerala border is located behind the sleeping lady mountain. The mounds on this one resemble a sleeping lady.
Bhaskar has two theories: 1. the soldiers may have been far from their spouses too long. 2. Well.. Kodaikanal’s vicinity? Both seem plausible to me. Without a guide, we wouldn’t have known about all these names and pattern finding. Our guide also offered to click some pictures of us and that’s where the story begins! He basically made us climb trees and clicked our photos; we humored him! Well, he also told us to hold hands on the tree; we humored him. While this was happening, some elite middle-aged well-spoken folks happen to pass us by. They laughed at us! It seemed like something I would do too but I’d be civil about it.
I felt like clarifying to those guys that I’m not a part of this; the guide is making us do it; like I’m being put in a social group where I don’t belong; like I’m being seen as a certain class that thinks handholding in pictures is cute. Laughing at such mannerisms is extremely classist and I’m guilty too. I have done it! I’ve laughed at PDAs and love birds in public parks. I’ve laughed at Tiktokers and people who write their names on trees. I’ve seen trashy movies and wondered who the fuck does that! But today I realized that more than half my country likes it just to deal with the realities of existence. If you’re a tour guide waiting for people to start traveling again, won’t you try to please them in the best way you know?
And then, someone snubs at you because they would do it differently? My point is, fuck rich people just fuck them! First of all, they are the biggest threat to the environment and, secondly, they have their heads too far above their ass. Remember when all of us started watching trashy movies? what was that? We should probably ask what was socio-economic status of people who actually enjoyed them. I started respecting TikTok because it democratized content creation. It really doesn’t mean I have to be on it! Whatever became of being tolerant unless it’s outrightly problematic? Just like we’ve gradually started to let old people be old people, we should also let poor people be poor people (culturally, economically we should support them). I think touristing is also touted middle class by the elite few who think they are just above it!
I’m done trying to call myself middle-class or even upper-middle class. I think rich people get their self-worth from being rich and not necessarily having a personality. So they would tell you how they are better than you and basically, everyone how they are better than them, based on just how they choose to do “offbeat” shit, like chilling at the bungalow they rented, avoiding touristy things, eating good food and intoxication? Isn’t that rich people vacation scene? BTW, we also got laughed at by a very close friend when we told him that we did simple things like look at the hill and observed how its vegetation is entirely different from the ones we have seen before.
I think rich people should keep their opinions to themselves when they don’t care about the communities that are hosting them. By all means, feel free to not leave you villas and get high all day but don’t fucking laugh at those who leave their villas to just be curious. Don’t fucking laugh at small-town peeps.
Here are some pictures of us though.
