I’ve always believed that the way someone treats people who can’t offer them anything in return tells you everything you need to know about them.
Back in India, I watched something that left a mark. Some women I knew people from privileged homes would speak in fluent English to rickshaw pullers, vegetable sellers, waiters. Not to be understood, but to perform. To show class. To draw a line. To declare: I am above you.
They weren’t just speaking they were distancing.
What struck me wasn’t the language. It was the lack of empathy. The refusal to meet people where they are. The belief that speaking in English even when Hindi or Bengali would do just fine somehow elevated them.
It’s something I’ve seen again and again, especially now that I live in the US. There are people who, even when you speak to them in your shared mother tongue, insist on replying in English. Sometimes, it’s not even English it’s an accent. One they’ve picked up for display. One they perform, not because they have to, but because they want to sound different. Superior. Western.
This obsession with “sounding right,” “speaking well,” “blending in” has seeped so deeply into our skin that it now defines how we see each other. Those who can’t speak “correctly,” whose accents are not polished, not clean, are mocked. Dismissed. Laughed at.
And it hurts. It hurts because language is meant to connect, not divide. To create warmth, not humiliation. We come from countries with hundreds of languages, dialects, and rhythms. Why then do we use just one of them to measure worth?
To me, sophistication is not about English. It’s about empathy. About being able to sit across from someone, no matter who they are or where they come from, and make them feel seen. It’s about not needing to constantly showcase how cultured you are. It’s about listening more than performing.
I don’t want to be around people who use language as a weapon. I want to be around people who use it as a hug. People who don’t need to show off. Who understand the working class, who stand against this bourgeois obsession with packaging, perfection, and power.
The most “classy” people I’ve met aren’t the ones with perfect grammar. They’re the ones who ask the waiter’s name. Who laugh without checking if they look good. Who don’t mock accents but listen for meaning.
We need to grow out of this. Because real kindness doesn’t need a language. It just needs presence.
And maybe that’s what I’m learning more and more you don’t need to stand out. You just need to stand with.
