Power of Ignorance

“Power of Ignorance” is one of the outstanding stories of the first biannual International Short Story Contest 2018 written by Tamanna Mishra, Delhi Private School, Dubai, UAE.

Power of Ignorance

My dad received a work offer in UAE, hence our next location became Dubai for a few years of stay together in a very different laboratory.

We shifted to Dubai 8 years ago from Bahrain with total ignorance of Malayalam and a broken Arabic.

That initial couple of months were very innovative and frustrating when we found people around us for our support miss rule us with very noble interest to serve client better. To elaborate it more here I write about two incidences from the winter of 2009. A cab during our return journey from Karama metro station took a peculiar turn as if we got cheated but when we get to the final destination earlier than we expected into our gardens apartment and finally, we realized his noble intention but our language barrier kept us non expressive during the ride and got feedback as supportive customer on a trip to tourist paradise. We are lucky enough to hold the patience rather due to language barrier. The very next day, a water bottle delivery company sent four bottles of Masafi water and the delivery person banged on the door very hard frustrated as we delayed in opening the door. My dad got angry but he could not express his anger. After a few sweet and expressive conversations, he came to knew that one of his family members fell ill. The above two incidents made us think throughout our stay in this country to behave with ignorance for more sweet good rewards out of few patience and empathetic way towards people around us.

What we found that day when the private taxi took the wrong turn or the water delivery boy banged continuously, we would get flustered and sense the growing-anger in me. But I wouldn’t know how to convert it into proper words so I would be forced to suppress it! Almost always, in 5 minutes, I would realize that the driver took the wrong turn because he knew a shorter route and the delivery boy banged because he was seriously ill. No one ever did anything that would have justified the words-nearly-spoken. And in their words, we were a 'well-mannered' neighbor!

But at work and home, there was English and Hindi, the common language. We could articulately communicate our disappointment, anger, and threats with ease and in real time. I often became the 'ill-mannered' girl.

Here we rediscovered a life full of happiness around us if and only if we accept the worldly earth despite of huge differences as it was. The journey we undertook is to explore the world and its differences due to the changes. Hence forth we visited places of importance at Indian historical places, the France and Armenia. All of them unique, beautiful, different and delightful. As a grown up girl, my experiences around the world is utmost separate and different but eventually the ignorant mindset to fetch good outcome allows me to earn the person in me. I respect individuals and their differences and to know them better creates a skill to listen more and speak the minimum amount. Experiences and exposure are my fate and destiny but situation allows us, especially me to hold back to react instantaneously and that ignorant style of functioning gave me a way to learn and choose art as my career in days to come. The best real time story with the cab and water delivery man is a stepping stone to mould me as person in a world to flourish as the expatriate in me. It allows more to grow within us as the person to rebuild early to bring humanity and humanly function of mine. When I learnt the accidental outcome in gross desire to be me then it’s a life time exposure to reckon with more and more. The world gave a worldly ignorant me to hold back for a while and see the inner soul of the person in front of me and the beautiful world around us. Its love, compassion and respect for each other.

What ignorance taught me was that holding me back (without choice) helped rather than hinder the situation. With this insight, the lesson we learned is to start holding yourself back even with people with whom we have a common language of communication. This external change ensured an internal change – the ability to, almost always, stay calm and happy. The moral of the real time story is to be patient to hold back for a couple of minutes to receive the real essence and beauty of the world around us amid the anger, disappointment and other negative things.