Indian dies in Thar express in Pakistan.

Alright.

I honestly pray to God for this gentleman's soul to rest in peace.

But what's in this news that it should feature on the front page of The Hindu?

What's in this news that it should feature in any page of any news paper?

Don't Indian's die in the Orient express? Don't Indians die of cardiac arrest? Or is it only possible for an Indian to die of cardiac arrest in the Thar Express? Or is it unacceptable only if an Indian dies of cardiac arrest in the Thar express? Which part of this news is so important that it found its place in today's newspaper!

Here's what infuriated me.

One of my all-time favourite behaviour skills sessions, is the one on cultural sensitivity. I used to do it extensively and with a lot of passion and preparation at Infosys. It was called Global Effectiveness.

The session started with an interesting activity called "Perception exercise" where the class was divided into 6 teams, each team was assigned a country, given a chart paper and markers and asked to put down their perceptions about a person coming from this country. This is how I asked them to think - "Let us say you are working on a project and your manager comes and tells you that tomorrow a person from XYZ country is going to join this project, then what's it that would go through your mind?". The team would then come and present its points to the rest of the class and also tell us how they formed this perception. The class could add points, share their experiences, ask questions, seek clarifications. It invariably resulted in a heated argument. I watched the fun.

As a rule, the team talking about Pakistan, in each session, stated, that every moment that they work with this new team member, would be a tensed passage of time.Reason? The Pakistani could plant a bomb in the office.Obviously no one in that team has ever seen a Pakistani. So how do they know of this potential bomber? History text books, grandparents, and.. articles like the one mentioned above.

Articles that come in bold, big font on the front page of a reputed news paper, forcing a young mind to put Indian, Pakistani and some means of death, all three together - resulting in one perception as the one stated above.

Thankfully in all my sessions so far, there has at least been one participant to stand up and ask, "Can't the Indian in your team plant the bomb?". Everybody agrees, everybody nods. But does that wipe the perception about the Pakistani?