Smile works wonder

With regard to Mr. Ross Gulliver's analysis (The Jakarta Post, July 17, 1995) I would like to state my views. As an expatriate I have never as such encountered any such instances of racism in Indonesia. Whenever we traveled to different parts of Indonesia we came back with a lovely feeling of having shared something invaluable. We have always admired Indonesians for their immeasurable patience, accepting nature and self-control. Look at the way they quietly tolerate the traffic jams and they hardly end up in fist cuffs or rows! On my innumerable trips to shopping plazas I have always encountered immaculately dressed, smiling Indonesians who tell me how much they love watching the movies of my country and even ask me to translate a few words for them.

And talking about Indonesian doctors, I must say that a certain Indonesian doctor has given me a new lease of life. Once I happened to be totally incapacitated due to a major spinal injury for a couple of months. Life had come to a virtual standstill and I often thought it was meaningless to live on. Hope came to me in the form of an elderly Indonesian doctor who is not only a great orthopedic surgeon but is generously endowed with a charming disposition and a magnetic personality. It was this divine doctor who guaranteed 100 percent success and performed a very risky operation. I was able to walk on the third day after my operation.

I would like to inform my fellow readers that if this operation had not been a success and if any of the nerves had been erroneously severed in the process I would have been confined to a bed for the rest of my life. The other doctors I have encountered on various occasions have always given me a patient hearing and have been only too eager to help.

I think we should try to overlook one or two solitary instances of racism (if anything of this ever exists here) and treat it in a different light. A smile to counterbalance an abusive racial remark can even be tried out, because a tit for tat is not always the best means of communicating. At times a smile does help to diffuse tension.

AJANTA SARKAR

Bekasi, West Java