Streets of Nana

Something about these streets draw your attention to the people. You look at as many people as you can, with the big and dodgy lights as backgrounds. In your car there is music, but somehow your mind pays more attention to the faint sound of the background music outside. The beat drops, foreign words are heard, lights still flashing. So many faces, so many stories behind those faces, so many walks of life walking on the same streets, so many motives, purposes, intentions, reasons. Yet as people drive past these streets, we all come up with a collective impression - low class, cheap, meaningless. Maybe it's because of the skanky looking prostitutes that linger along the whole stretch of the road, siding men of every kind; religious, miserable, rich. Maybe it's the cheap selling things that they sell at the stalls and the aggressively pushy sellers that desperately wants you to buy their stuff. But people forget to go a step deeper and wonder why these prostitutes are there and why these things are so cheap. Behind those cheap, low quality things, lies a valuable business lesson. Behind those girls who put a price on their dignity, lies a priceless story of what brought them there. Behind the dodgy looking guy, lies an unhappy marriage and many lonely nights. Behind those desperate faces of the seller, lies a heartbreaking reason, perhaps a responsibility, that forces them to do what they do to make ends meet.

But just from 5 minutes of drive, instead of learning something profound, our minds only morphed out two things by the end of the street: Cheap. Low.