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Mumbai: Rudest Or Most Caring

By LIFS August 10, 2006 at 10:21 AM

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The overly genteel Reader's Digest was rude enough to label Mumbai the rudest city in the world - and Asia the rudest continent. But surely the august magazine, known for its quips and funnies, was joking. It tested to see if people in the city held the door for their reporters, salesmen said thank you after a sale and if they bothered to pick up littered paper. After all, how can you judge a city by the most puerile kindergarten rules of politeness, the thank you and please barometers? Even New Yorkers snickered that their city topped the Reader's Digest list of most polite city in the world!

Mumbai showed the world what real courtesy is all about - it's slum dwellers donating their bed sheets to the injured and the bleeding victims of the bomb blasts on the trains that run past their shacks. For the citizens of Mumbai, politeness is not just about holding the door open for the person behind you, it's about opening your hearts and giving your blood to strangers, carting unknown people in your car to the hospital and offering food and water to unknown human beings. Top marks to Mumbai for showing its gritty heart of gold.

Most Courteous	Least Courteous
New York	Singapore
Toronto	Kuala Lumpur
Sau Paulo	Mumbai
Zurich	Seoul
Berlin	Bucharest

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Comments (1 posted)

Upamanyu Mallik November 9, 2006 at 7:00 PM

I found LIFS' article to be an excellent one. I had lived in Bombay for 3 years, and to this day i consider Bombay to be the best city in the world. Bombayites may be simply too busy for the please or thank you, but they will always help you out if you are in need. People from the West have wrong impressions about the city. During 9/11, who bothered to give the injured people lifts to the hospital? In Bombay even the taxi-drivers drove the injured to the nearest hospital during 7/11. Slum-dwellers, who westerners might find uneducated, are way way more helpful than your entrepreneur from NYC. During 7/11, an auto-driver sheltered 2 girls at his house for 2 nights. I can't see a cabbie from any other part of the world bothering to do that??

bombay's got a heart. and that's what holds bombayites together.