Today, I boarded a random Uber ride on my way home through a torrential downpour. The rider seemed very prospective. He had already provided 1000+ rides within 3 months, and >50% were 5 star rides. More than a quarter went forward to give him 6 stars, and he had an overall 4.71 rating. One seemed to mention that this gentleman should be driving a Premier class car instead of his UberX. He was that good.

I judged him.

Instantly.

I thought that this will be a very nice guy, and that I am in for a quiet and pleasant ride home today. I had already bargained for “Pakistani” Umbrellas with Bangla seals on them in the middle of a jhor (let’s not mention the claim that the sheath material is European). I did not want another conversation for the day.

Allah had a different plan.

The moment I boarded the car, my driver started off with a repartee.

“Women should not get wet in the rain”

“What?”

“No, I mean, us guys – we can get wet in the rain. We don’t look bad. But have you ever looked at a drenched woman?“, he seemed interested in stirring up a conversation without any trigger. I couldn’t understand why. There was no woman around us. Just ugly guys who look uglier when drenched.

“Eki toh laage” – they look the same, I reply. I would write that I squinted my eyes – but I really didn’t.

“No men and women are equals, I know – but women these days wear clothes that don’t look good when they are drenched“.

I knew what the careful man was stepping into. Anybody would. And so I tried to play sly and mumbled a hadith about how we are not supposed to look instead. He takes the bait, and veers the conversation to how he knows the local commissioner in my area. He has worked for Mirza Abbas (a prominent political leader), he tells me.  Its another Bangladeshi trait. We like to boast about the people we know when we have nothing else to say.

I felt pissed off at him and his belief-structure.

Social construct, I wanted to scream out.

Your nipples look the same as theirs, I wanted to mention.

But I didn’t. Maybe because I didn’t want the extra load of a hypothetical debate – or just maybe because I was worried whether I was wrong myself.

As the conversation fades into the traffic and the thuds of the incessant rain against the windows, I realize where my faults lay; and why I should not judge him for his thoughts either.

Five years ago, I would have agreed with this guy. Totally. I came from a moderate Muslim family that would probably never allow its girls to get wet in the rain – even if they are on Niqab. It is a cultural thing here. I don’t have to explain much to my mental structure asto why this is normal. It just is.

But around that time (five years ago), I happened to come across a set of new friends, so my thought process changed.

You see, I come from a “boy’s school”, per say. The only religiously inclined school of its quality, (and also the one with the best fields in the city). I had a wide exposure to all kinds of guys, but to zero girls, zero people of other religions, and mostly zero thinkers. So my thoughts were formed around my small aquarium of exposure.

I was a goldfish in a 7 inch aquarium, who thought that the world revolves around him, and that there can be nothing in the world other than goldfishes and globular food.

My friends were a curious bunch.

Some studied all day. Some worked all day. Some slept around. Some were nerds. Others didn’t like studies much. One would drink too much coke. One snorted coke. Another would smoke in a corner and act like it is a crime. A few did weed. A couple of were into debate. One suddenly stopped wearing her religious veil and turned into Madonna. Some won international prizes. Some went abroad every semester on Vacations. Some didn’t have parents. Some wouldn’t talk to their parents because they were still using the iPhone 6. Some cared whether their bag matches their shoes. Some wouldn’t care about eating at roadside stalls where they wash dishes with nose drips. Some wound’t even touch the teacups at roadside stalls because they are only into coffee and hygienic brews from fake Starbucks ripoffs. Some were gay. Some were anti-gay. Some only approved of lesbians. Some wore the orna as a bandana. Some wore shoelaces as hairpins. Some wouldn’t wear anything less than Charles and Keith. Some thought birthdays suck. Some celebrated it like nothing else in the world. Some would hug strangers. Some would run away from kittens.

But you see, that is how I used to see them. 

Reality was a little different.

At the end of the day, all of these people are simply who they are – given their exposure to the world.

The five years younger me was not wrong. It was just only right in its own bubble.

The one that studied all day? That’s what they saw their family doing in their free time.

The one that worked all day? They loved the thrill of it.

The one that slept around? It was okay in his community and where he was born.

The one that didn’t like studies? I learned many years later that she suffers from a mild form of dyslexia. Characters make no sense to her. Only numbers do.

The one that drinks coke too much? She stopped. But until then, she wasn’t really drinking coke all day. She just carried a bottle around all day. I never realized.

The one that snorted coke? Well, he likes to snort coke. Big deal.

The ones that did weed or smoked? To them, it was the simplest form of recreation. They liked the high.

The ones that debated? Well, their school had a great debating coach who inspired them when they were young.

The one that turned into Madonna over the weekend? She lost her faith. Not a crime, no.

The list would go on and on.

My point is – each and every single of these people only lived in their bubbles. None of them would force me to do anything that I do not like.

If I didn’t want them to smoke around me – they wouldn’t. If I touched dirty stray kittens, they would still shake my hands. Some would wear Charles and Keith and go out with me wearing Opposite to Dhaka College t-shirts and brand-less sneakers. They would celebrate my birthday if I wanted them to come over. They would stand with me as I sipped on my roadside-tea and fish-ice lemonades. They wouldn’t judge.

They were an amazing bunch of carefree people.

My friends wouldn’t fall around the clay-dough’s of idealistic expectations and social norms (and melt into pizza). Rather, they simply didn’t care where they would fall as long as they weren’t hurting anybody.

And that is when I realized what was my issue.

Just like that Uber driver – I was trying to pull all of them into my aquarium when I first met them. Off course, I wouldn’t approve of many things in my aquarium – and that is okay too. But only as long as the realization exists that the world is full of aquariums – and others have no reason to share mine. They live a different life. They have different friends. They studied different things. They follow a different way of life. They have different dreams. They have different expectations. Their aquariums are their own!

Some saw themselves as a Koi, and some as Squids.

They wouldn’t fit into my small goldfish aquarium, would they?

Until I realized that, I was in a total mess of judgement. Because you see, until you are in that aquarium – you can’t realize that you shouldn’t judge people for their belief structure!

My Uber driver probably grew up in a small village three hundred miles away from the city. He attended  the local school for 8 years, where he learned how to add 60 to 70, and attended the yearly urosh events as if his life depended upon it. His is his own bubble of thoughts – where his society taught him to judge people in a manner that his society finds acceptable.

It would be wrong for me to judge him based on what my own society and knowledge entails. Let alone my morality, which in itself is a personal construct of justice. Maybe my thoughts regarding this will change as the days go by. But right now, I somehow believe that I have a strong understanding of how my judgement structure should work.

• If they are not in my aquarium, then I have no right to judge
• If they are not getting into anybody else’s bubble, they are not judge-worthy
• Their thoughts, in their own bubbles, are simply logical expressions derived off their knowledge at that point in time. I have no right to judge them at any point.

Offcourse, this creates issues. For instance, how would I judge a guy who shares rape-jokes? How about that other one who thinks demeaning meme’s about Solaiman Sukhon or Ananta Jalil are cool? What about that one guy who watches WWE in 2018?

Those, I grapple with. I admit. But it helps to have a structure you struggle with, rather than a social construct that you do not understand too well, no?

So yeah, I don’t know why I wrote this. Maybe because many years later, it would be nice to come back to thread and realize how naive I was in 2018. Or maybe, I would just come back and read this many years later, only to realize that the me in 2018 wasn’t as progressive as he thought.