In recent times billions of words have been written about
the Delhi gang rape. We have been like raging bulls thrashing around our society,
educational system, faulty upbringing, absence of laws, corrupt law enforcers
and so on. Though I refrained from joining the wagon with yet another article I
mostly agreed with them. I signed many petitions, joined a rally and blamed
everyone I could think of.
But then one of my female colleague’s experience cast
a totally different light on the whole thing. Just two days before the horrible
incident of Delhi, my colleague was saved by a group of construction workers
when a sophisticatedly dressed man tried to pin her down after she’d asked his
help when her car broke down. That man drove a Toyota Corolla and wore an ID of
a reputed company! When the workers confronted him, not only did he run away in his car, he almost ran over one of the workers when he fled at full speed.
Now there has been much hues and cries about the social
class and education of the people who could stoop to such low morality. What do
you think this incident suggests? The man who was at fault here had probably
gone to a B-school given the ID tag he wore while those workers who saved my
colleague had probably never crossed the threshold of a pre-school. Contradiction.
Isn’t it?
Everyday newspapers carry at least one article on
Global Warming. It is a very common topic of discussion among newly acquainted
people because everyone has a fair amount of knowledge about it. Yet the
roadside garbage or the dry fallen leaves at the backyard are set on fire with
an astonishing frequency.
Schools teach elementary environmental studies from
the first grade. But I often spot adolescent kids in impeccable school uniforms
hanging from feeble tree branches just for the fun of tearing them down.
Indian society is all about respecting elders. Each parent,
at some point of time or the other, has taught their children to show respect and
care to the elderly. Yet in a crowded bus or train, it takes a teenager to point
out to a middle-aged man (father of another teenager in all probability), that
there was an old man standing and probably needed more to sit down than him.
The wife of the big house that my apartment’s balcony
directly overlooks into, washes big buckets full of soiled clothes every
morning, occasionally running to stir the curry cooking or to supervise her
small son, while her husband reclines in an arm chair with 2-3 newspapers. But as
my office bus passes by an inhabited footpath, I find a wife rubbing a small
piece of soap on the clothes while the husband dips them into bucket full of
water.
If drinking alcohol is bad and is the main reason
behind most of the unorganized crimes, then why do we have at least one government
liquor shop every 100 meters? And why does the government offer hundreds of thousands of money as
compensation to the family of anyone who died from drinking liquor from a
government shop?
Well. I am confused now! Contradictions are very
confusing indeed. Hmm. I would better brush
my teeth now listening to the soothing sound of the running tap water which I would
leave open just to hear the sound. Oops! Sorry! Contradiction. Again!
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Riot of Random
