Word spread across the countryside about the wise Holy Man who lived in a small house atop the mountain. A man from the village decided to make the long and difficult journey to visit him. When he arrived at the house, he saw an old servant inside.

"I would like to see the Holy Man," he said to the servant.

The servant smiled and led him inside. As they walked through the house, the man from the village looked eagerly around the house, anticipating his encounter with the Holy Man. Before he knew it, he had been led to the back door and escorted outside.

He stopped and turned to the servant, "But I want to see the Holy Man!"

"You already have," said the wise old man. "Everyone you may meet in life, even if they appear plain and insignificant, see each of them as a Holy Man. If you do this, then whatever problem you brought here today will be solved."

Tell me, am I the only person who has ever felt miffed at being mistaken for the sales help at the Payless Shoe store?

After all, they are not all 'Life didn't pass me by; it sat on my head' Al Bundy lookalikes. In fact, I don’t remember ever seeing a middle-aged man selling shoes. Most are young -- tall/short, fat/thin, well-dressed/not -- and appear interested/not in serving customers on any given day. They could be anyone. They could be me.

So why do I feel irked? Could it be the attitude I grew up with back home? Aren’t we used to thinking that hired help at stores are barely literate people who go nowhere in life? A certain disdain for such folks is carefully sowed in us from the very start. Casteism/classism or whatever-you-phrase-it is a part of us.

After my just-off-the-boat freshness wore off, I realised quite a few of them were students who do such part-time jobs to help pay their tuition charges. It could have so easily been me if I did not have the student stipend and visa restrictions which did not allow me to work off-campus.

Why, then, was I upset to be mistaken for sales help? Just my ignorance, I guess.

Recently, I met an old friend from India whose parents had migrated here. Her kid sister attended high school in the US. She said she had encountered a lot of 'racism' in class at first. In the fifth grade? Yes, she said. She went on to narrate a few incidents which seemed bereft of serious hostility to me.

In fact, it seemed like nothing more than an initial nastiness which every incoming student experiences before settling in anywhere. My father’s transferable job took me to a different city every three years. The name-calling and complete unfriendliness at times from my new classmates would take me aback. I had no easy phrase to fall back on: What could I have said, "regionalism"? Even that would not be true. It was a fairly mixed class in terms of geography.

Post September 11, this racism charge seems rampant. But we are not the only ones singled out for security checks. Even now, I would think twice before using the word in connection with everyday events because, personally, I am just plain confused about such people. Are they just plain wrong-headed or do they behave badly simply because of the colour of my skin? I can never be certain.

Why get all worked up then?

I am not foolish enough to argue that no racism exists in America -- after all, the Civil Rights movement is less than half a century old in this country. And discrimination based on a person’s appearance exists wherever close-minded people do.

Still, it is best to not assume such people are around every corner waiting to pounce on you. I am sure we are well within our rights to speak our mind when confronted by rude strangers. Who are they to question us anyway? More often than not, they are not officially qualified to do so. Why are we so ready to be intimidated by such people? There is no need to stand around and be bullied by them.

This is also a good time to think of those immigrants who landed here back when there were no desi stores, no software boom, no Internet, no phone lines even in their homes in India. If all they did was talk about discrimination instead of going about their work in a dignified way, dispelling prejudices and earning their rightful place in this society, America would have been a land of missed opportunities for all of us.

Till the world goes not just colour-blind, but appearance-blind as well, we could all use a Zen attitude.

Until then, says Sandrah R Pereira, om shanti om!

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh

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