Nice Vs Nasty

Vikraman, a famous director in Tamil Cinema, known for his movies with feel good factor, makes run of the mill movies appealing to family audience in '90s. The heroes in his movies are so nice to people that you would wonder whether they have any self-respect and why such  impracticality. Being nice is ok, but being nice to a girl who ditches and humiliates him is simply atrocious.  Yes, happened to watch "portions" of his movie ('Unnai Ninaithu') starring Surya. Man, I should accept that I just couldn't appreciate what the hero did in the movie. It's title of the post - Being Nice vs Nasty. The immediate question that popped up was "Can one be nice to a nasty person and vice versa?"  The exploration continued...

Before jumping into the analysis, I feel one should be Natural and Normal before conditioning our responses. However, when we have the option, time and wisdom to think and respond, it does make sense to think which way to respond.

Someone once said "What you give is what you get back" - If not always, it's true in most occasions. Being nice may seem nice as you get back lots of niceties, but in reality, it's a little nasty for 2 reasons: (a) It may not be your "real" response (b) You might spoil the person who should have got it right the first time.  It's stupid of you to be nice to your kid who keeps making the mistake intentionally. Or if someone whips on one side of your ass, doesn't make sense to show the other side. You don't have to be nasty, but it doesn't make sense to be nice either.

The positive aspect of nastiness is that it could be very effective learning tool. It prepares us to face the real world. A kid only exposed to niceties from its parents is sure to face a shock when it enters the real world. A bit of nastiness and challenge could hit us hard - to learn, to understand and to mature as a person. The parathas won't have the yummy taste without the beatings it got, nor does the diamond shine without the abrasiveness it faced. Same story with your muscle and gold.

People always mistake whom to show their niceties and nastiness to. We have this insane habit of constantly judging people and rank them vis-a-vis us - from job, money, power and personality to family and friends. Through this comes the fictitious spectrum of superiority and inferiority in people's mind. You would have seen this in roads: Some auto driver hits a car, the rich guy from the car gets out and smashes the driver. Yes, it happens if the driver is meek and poor. Same doesn't happen for a 100 kg sardar truck driver with his muscles trying to break out of the shirt. Similarly, a drunken man slaps his wife but doesn't have the balls to resist when an employer slaps him. A teacher shouts at a student but becomes an yes-women for all the unethical activities of her higher officials. We show our power to the powerless and resist to show where and when it's required or challenged.

A true leader or a person who commands high respect from others never tries to be unnaturally nice to whom he considers his superiors. Nor does he screws the life of other category of people. He would be nice to the less fortunate group; remain confident, not sweeten the words and not lick the ass of the so called superiors.

To summarize, being natural is more important than the other two "N" cousins. What's is easy, favourable and doable may not be the best of the responses and most importantly, we might have to introspect and swap our current way of responses to people.