Amrit Bhandari
She was greeting all the passengers entering the aircraft with her dazzling smile. The passengers seemed to be in a rush to board the plane to Pokhara. The Namaste offered by the air hostess was greeted differently by different people. When it was my turn to get in, she again greeted me with an energetic smile and Namste. I greeted back with Namaste too. Each time I travel by domestic plane, I see the same greeting from the air hostess. By in the first time I boarded a domestic flight, I was very confused to watch passengers ignoring the greeting offered by the air hostess.
The last time I had got into the plane, a question hit me. Why almost all passengers from Nepal ignore the greeting? Foreign passengers, I found, always returned the greeting. Basically, Namaste is a respectful greeting. It honours people and in our culture indicates the respect and admiration for those being greeted. It brings people closer. In the same way, we find people from other countries greet with hello, hi and other greetings.
I just couldn’t get the cavalier attitude of Nepali passengers out of my mind. To placate my curiosity, I talked with an air hostess serving in a domestic airline on my way to Nepalgunj from Kathmandu. Why did she think most Nepali passengers never bothered to acknowledge her greeting? She said, “People believe that since they have paid for the journey, they need not do any more. These self-important people make me laugh.”
Nilima has experienced that many Nepalis travelling in domestic aeroplane, especially the rich ones, never respond to her greeting. “Look, the foreigners always respond without hesitation. They honour us for we honour them,” Nilima says. To say that Nilima is disappointed at the cold response of her fellow countrymen while the foreigners treat her with respect would be a huge understatement.
I don’t get it. Why wear our pride on our sleeves unnecessarily to make others feel bad and sad? Doing Namaste is our culture and we should try to respond to it gracefully. During my last trip, when the aeroplane landed in Pokhara and as people were getting out, the air hostess, as usual, offered her Namastes; unfortunately almost all Nepali passengers totally ignored her.
If we want to get respect from others we need to know how to respect them. If not, we won’t even be able to respect ourselves. No matter who greets you, you give a measure of your acculturisation and civility responding to the greeting. When I greeted the air hostess at Pokhara with a, she smiled back coyly. I bid goodbye her and disappeared into Pokhara city.
