The ubiquitous nature of serendepity

Is it me or do I happen to come across such incidents?
Last week, I caught an auto to take me my destination. The auto driver asked me which route to take and I responded in Kannada, almost instinctively. The driver eyed me with a look of pure spite, I wondered why...

As we budged along the traffic, I asked him to take a diversion to avoid some traffic, again in Kannada. The look of spite again. My phone buzzed and I went into a deluge of English. The look of spite again from the driver. I still could not fathom the looks, maybe it was just a habit...

Finally, the look of spite translated to words. Possibly he understood that I did not figure out the point he was trying to make. He asked, "Why don't you people speak in English with us?" in English (I wonder if he was referring to the brethren of auto drivers as "we") . I responded saying "How was I to know that you speak English?". Apparently, his first bit of conversation with me was in English to which I responded in Kannada. He went on to claim that educated people were arrogant and ignored less mortals such as himself, not in so many words though.

Are we as the so called "English" educated people really arrogant. Possibly it is true to a certain extent. Possibly my brain did register the fact that the auto driver spoke to me in English, but the rule of default reminds me that I should speak to him in Kannada. Its this feeling of refinement and culture that we associate with English. A person can be a crook, but could get away from being recognized in society as a crook by refining the self with English. Should we blame the British or ourselves? This reminds me of this Tamil movie called Anbe Sivam, in which a similar thought echoed in one of the scenes where the protagonist is duped by one of the so called "thorough gentlemen". The prosaic nature of the thought of decency is shown in a forthcoming scene showing the protagonist sitting is a state of complete disbelief that the gentleman could have been a crook. I would partly blame it on the British for having propogated their anglo-saxan decency.

I cant recall the number of times I have come across people similar in the nature to the crook (not in terms of being kleptomaniacs) mentioned earlier. The language is possibly the best possible way of being clandestine. Several thoughts spawned in my grey matter then, most of which I am unable to recall now. That day as the auto motored along the crowded roads, I noticed the driver had a certain disregard for rules on the road, punctuated by the occasional spot of saliva on the road. Surely, language alone does not cause refinement in people. The anglo-saxan decency is probably just a myth or worse, extinct.