Hello friends,
hope you are doing great today.
I’ve just updated my article which I’ve posted yesterday titled Why number seven is seen as a lucky number? I was telling my parents about the article over lunch and they’ve just given me more information around the number seven when it comes to Hindu wedding ceremonies. You can see this update towards the end of the article; however, this article is not about yesterday’s article. It’s earned its own spotlight so let’s get right to it.
It’s about time that I got writing about this article. The reason why I have come to this article is that I remember a time when I was a teenager in South Africa. When you read my books The South African: True Colours and The South African: Roamer I talk about the Hindu culture and I go into Saesha’s (the MC’s) upbringing in the Gujarati culture. Now after travelling and returning to my country but not so much immersed into the Gujarati culture now I can tell you that the way things have been operating in the past, not only within the Hindu culture but all around the world cannot go back to being the same, not ever again.
Why? The world can’t keep up with the boxes it puts people in and now more than ever it’s often a big mistake to do that. Why? Because the world has become such a place where let’s say, for example, a child born in some part of India can be adopted by some family in Europe, America, United Kingdom, Thailand… pretty much anywhere in the world. In fact, this has been happening more frequently in the last twenty years or so. You can no longer see a person’s face and skin colour and assume. It just isn’t going to work. In fact, it could end up being a mistake for you or your company to do that. A loss of someone’s genius just because we shove people into boxes.
Do you know how many lives have been ruined because of systems based on race, judgement and shoving people into boxes? I’m fluent in Spanish, I’ve immersed into the culture, I’ve even had a partner who only spoke Spanish, I’ve studied in various schools in Spanish in Spain, I’ve lived with Spanish housemates, I’ve worked for a company where I spoke in English and wrote notes on the system in Spanish in Spain, but living in Spain over eight years wasn’t enough, and then I go to England, London. The city with the most competition and most foreigners from the EU and the biggest multi-cultural city in the United Kingdom, London. Now imagine a Hindu woman comes in while companies are recovering from the economic crisis. She speaks Spanish fluently; people just couldn’t believe it and if it was already difficult for a Hindu girl who speaks fluent Spanish in Spain (because in the year 2004 I was the only Hindu woman walking the streets of Madrid or a very very tiny minority travelling around Spain) It was only later down the line did I see more Indian women in some cities in Spain, can you imagine how hard it was for me to enter a role speaking Spanish in an English multinational company with a person from Spain conducting the interview? I hate to tell you, that putting people in boxes really makes lives harder, and I’m not entering victim mode here, I am being raw with you here. I personally resigned from signing up for Spanish speaking roles or any other languages roles apart from English because it’s become such a headache. When you go around the world and you keep finding the majority and not the minority pushing you into a box, you have to spend loads, people, loads of energy having to prove people. I eventually got a role after so many interviews for a post for a Spanish speaker, but I had to go through the following in so many jobs over my eighteen years overseas:
- That you’re worthy of why you’re there.
- That you’re forcing me to play a game when we can pass that and just get on with what we need to achieve for the company. Really there’s no need to test this. The last time I checked, I was only around a crowd of Spanish people and no English people for years. So, if the Spanish isn’t what you’re questioning then why are you questioning my English?
Seriously, let me get one hundred percent clean with you. When 9/11 happened, travelling for me was a headache. Sometimes even if I didn’t want to take my guitar with me, I took it so that I am not instantly put into a box or seen as a terrorist.
My French is also very good. Cumon people, stop making people live a life where they have to keep spending their energy on slaying dragons instead of getting on with the real purpose of why you called people to sit in front of you in the first place. Don’t you think that they too are sitting in front of you so that they can stop paying schools, taking crap jobs so that they can put the language down on their CV to prove to you that they are worthy of the role they’ve applied for? People like us, mix raced, multi-cultural, people of colour DO NOT want to spend our lives paying schools for grammar and conversation when we can work perfectly fine in companies and spend money on other ways and places to excel? What happened to hiring an asset who keeps investing in their skills? Isn’t that good for your company? So, I just want to point out that one company put an Italian who lived in England for ten years, and she discarded every other race to do an English-speaking role apart from Italians.
The United Kingdom became a country that had no regard for its commonwealth citizens. I hope this will be reviewed before the new world moves on.
Can we not agree on one thing? If you’re born on earth you have a right? Can we at least agree on that? The fact that you’re here on earth you’re already worthy, remember this friends, no matter what the odds are. If you can take what most soldiers can’t and still stand up, you are not made for a small purpose. To end I want to leave you with this quote, “Keep striving, for God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers.” – Habeeb Akande
Lastly, can we just begin to believe that the person sitting in front of you is sitting there because they have worked hard, they have tried their best and they’re looking for a chance to do better? If they can do better for you, then that means they can do better for themselves and others. Most people do end up sending the elevator down for others to come up in their life whether you can see it or not, whether you can believe it or not and whether you want to judge that too or not. Your call. When people get treated unfairly they treat others unfair – T. Dench Patel, 19 May 2020, 22:49
If that won’t change then I will tell you what will. People will be in the position to choose and you better get used to the fact that they might not choose you or your company. People will finally be stepping into their worth.
Exploitation ends here.
Yours sincerely,
T. Dench Patel
Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by either purchasing one of my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.
The audiobook for The South African: True Colours is available on iTunes, Apple and Audible. The South African: Roamer and Light will be released soon.
Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to re-evaluate them.
