(A Travel Anecdote from Malaysia)
We were sitting in this cheap roadside Bangladeshi restaurant in Malaysia having our brunch—chapati and chicken curry—when my wife, ever the social one, struck up a conversation with the joint’s co-owner. He looked vaguely Indian, which is always a cultural guesswork sport in this part of the world.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“Bangladesh,” he replied.
He turned to me. “And you guys?”
“I’m from Tamil Nadu, India.”
I’ve made it a point to say “Tamil Nadu” before “India” when travelling abroad. It’s my small act of cultural resistance. Because otherwise, the moment I say “India,” out comes the reflexive “namaste,” as if that’s our national password. I usually reply with “vanakkam” and then slip in a short lecture about Tamil being one of the world’s oldest living languages—and how we’re not “Hindi.” Some are genuinely intrigued. The rest, I assume, go home and Google it.
But this Bangladeshi guy didn’t Google. He fired straight.
“Tamil Nadu? Means you’re Tamilian?”
“Yes.”
“Tamilians bahut harami hotein hain.”
Which, translated from Hindi, means: Tamilians are assholes.
Now pause for a second.
I was like, Holy Fuck! Here I am, eating at his restaurant, giving him business, sharing space, sharing food and this mother fucking Bangladeshi cunt calls me an asshole?
I kept it cool. “Hua kya bhai?” What happened?
Apparently, five years ago, a Tamil Malaysian couple swindled him. Took his money. And in his mind, that was sufficient reason to write off all Tamils globally. It’s the oldest human bug in the system—one person wrongs us, and the whole group becomes guilty by association.
We kept going back to that joint. The food was good, and hey—it was cheap. Slowly, the ice thawed. He played with my son. We chatted about life. Took selfies on the last day. When we told him we were flying out, he looked genuinely sad. “See you next time,” he said.
People generalise because the brain wants shortcuts. It’s efficient, yes. But lazy too. One Tamil cheats you, suddenly all Tamils are cheats. One man hurts you, all men are trash. One woman breaks your heart, women are heartless. One bad experience blooms into a worldview.
But thankfully, there’s also something else inside us—a counter-program. The capacity to update. To rewrite. To say, “Maybe not all.”
In the end, the man who called me an asshole became the man who kissed my son’s forehead.
That’s the funny thing about people: we judge in bulk but learn in detail.