Mayus | India
“I’m just five months old in Auckland, and right now I’m studying at Otago Polytechnic.
On childhood…
My highlight from childhood is probably when I first got selected for my school basketball team, and all those times I used to play basketball and cricket back in India with my friends. Those are the moments that I cherish the most from my childhood.
I got selected for the under-19 basketball team of my district. I was only 13 back then. I used to play with the big boys, because the rest of the kids were around 17, 18 and 19. I went ahead and I represented my state. So that is something like representing the South Island versus the North Island of New Zealand. I did have a professional career in basketball where I used to represent my state and university for around five years. I took basketball too seriously, and I’m more into sports than I am into academics, so I was regularly on my college and school team for cricket and soccer.
On resolving conflict in a positive way…
I had a friend who had a bit of an argument with some other friend. So, he just wanted some input from my side, and I just told him what is right and what is wrong. I gave him my point of view, and just tried to tell him that you are in this situation and this is what I would do if I were in your place. This is something that I helped with and now they are back on normal terms.
I would always want to end my relationship with someone on a happy note. I would always go the extra mile and try to resolve issues, and I’ll always try to leave a smile on your face.
Let’s say when we finish this interview, then I would want you to have a good vibe about me, because I know that I’m representing my entire community, the entire Indian community right now. It is not the one single person or one single individual.
If we end an argument on a bad note with anyone who is a New Zealand local, then he would have an impression of the entire Indian community, that the community is not that good. So I would always try to end it on a positive note. That is something I always look for. I would want my image in their perspective that the Indian community, people from India, are really good.
On diversity…
At my university we have people from all cultures. We have people from Russia. We have people from China. We have a lot of people from different parts of Europe as well. You could say that 90 per cent of students there are from India. What happens when you divide people into groups, is there can be just one Chinese guy between four Indians. So what we do is try and tell him about our culture, and we try to learn different languages from him. I had a Chinese friend in my fourth semester, and we had a good conversation about simple things like how you say hello in Mandarin or how you say hello in Hindi, and all different words and sentences that you would probably use in your day to day life. That is something that we try to learn from each other. So that is accepting diversity for me.
On gender…
A time when I had to take the big man role, or the dominant male role, was in India. India is a male chauvinist society, if you can say that. We had a small function at our friends place, and it was when I had to do all the talking and it was basically a baby shower. The brother of the man whose baby shower it is, or the women’s husband’s brother has to do all the talking, and he has to talk with the girl who is pregnant. I had a chat with that lady before the entire set about the program and said that there’ll be no point where I will try to, you know, look you down or try to be the dominant gender in this scenario.
People pretend that they believe in equality, but at the end of the day it is the male who is always dominant. It is not that evident over here in the Western societies, but it is an issue over here as well. We have people who don’t treat women equally.
In India, I used to work with an NGO, and that NGO was about helping underprivileged kids to get an education. So, we are providing them free education. Not many people can afford an education over there, so we help them get an education for free. I told them the importance of education, how it would help them in the future course of their life.
I was conscious about gender inequality in India, so when I was working with the NGO, I gave more importance to the girls who were studying there. I always told the parents that they need to send their girls to school as well, because that is something that will help them in the future. Their education would help them live an independent life, because if they don’t have an education no-one would give them a job, and they would not be skilled enough to get a job in their society. I pushed the parents to give importance for the education of a girl and a boy equally.
One gender is physically stronger than the other gender, and I think if you look at what is happening in Africa or South Sudan or Nigeria right now, at what other terrorist groups are doing, it is the women who suffer more than the men. People are more aware of the fact that women are not getting the equal place they deserve in society. We still need to work on it, I would say, from my personal experience.”
