I've begun to hate the fact that I think so much. Manu was right -- while most people enjoy the ride, I prefer to sit and count the potholes.
I was standing outside church yesterday evening (while mass was going on inside). Next to me was this man and his two little daughters who were running around merrily. And I thought to myself: I wouldn't want to be the father of those beautiful little girls. What a horrible world I would be introducing them to ... it would be like taking a rose and throwing it into a gutter.
A question I ask myself very often -- is it too late to change things in this country? We Indians put up with so much; such a tolerant race we've become ... and we continue to carry our cross as though it was something we were predestined to do.
The shopping malls, the multiplexes, the pubs - that's not where our country is. I see our country in the face of the beggar-girl standing outside the entrance to Shoppers Stop looking through the glass at a world that must make no sense to her. Just as her world seems so distant from ours.
The more pertinent question -- whose world will prevail in the end? Will we get rid of them or will it be the other way around?
We are clearly out-numbered. So how much longer before they get us?
***
I've been hearing a lot about the rehabilitation of Mumbai's slum-dwellers. Nowhere is the overwhelming disparity between the haves and the have-not's more evident than in the city of Mumbai. (I haven't been to Calcutta, but they say its quite bad there too).
Poverty coupled with illiteracy is like a cancer that eats away at society - for which there is no cure; and treatment usually proves futile. The only solution is to take out those unwanted elements.
Adolf Hitler - he will always be remembered as a madman who perpetrated horrendous acts of evil in pursuit of an end, that to him was his idea of the perfect world.
Y'know, I've always wondered why Hitler never considered deporting the Jew's to some inhospitable region of the planet like Greenland or Antarctica? Why did he insist they be exterminated like vermin? Deportation would have been so much more convenient.
Was he really a madman ... or was he a genius who somehow did nothing right?
So, what then is my idea of the perfect world? Just like Huxley's Brave New World, I'd like it to be one where everybody is happy. But, as Huxley tells us, there is a cost attached to everything; a price to pay. And history has shown that the price of a perfect world is just too high.
***
I've always loved being close to nature ... high up on some mountain, or alone on a deserted beach. I remember how I felt sitting on a rock near the cliffs edge at Fort Aguada. Free - that's how I felt. Nothing else mattered.
But come back down to reality, and everything else matters.
They say if you don't like what you see, shut your eyes - shut your eyes and enjoy the ride as best you can. And that is exactly what so many of us today are doing.
Only problem with that, though, is: You have no idea where you're headed.
***
Said the Eye one day, "I see beyond these valleys a mountain veiled with blue mist. Is it not beautiful?"
The Ear listened, and after listening intently a while, said, "But where is any mountain? I do not hear it."
Then the Hand spoke and said, "I am trying in vain to feel it or touch it, and I can find no mountain."
And the Nose said, "There is no mountain, I cannot smell it."
Then the Eye turned the other way, and they all began to talk together about the Eye's strange delusion. And they said, "Something must be the matter with the Eye."
from: The Madman by Kahlil Gibran
I was standing outside church yesterday evening (while mass was going on inside). Next to me was this man and his two little daughters who were running around merrily. And I thought to myself: I wouldn't want to be the father of those beautiful little girls. What a horrible world I would be introducing them to ... it would be like taking a rose and throwing it into a gutter.
A question I ask myself very often -- is it too late to change things in this country? We Indians put up with so much; such a tolerant race we've become ... and we continue to carry our cross as though it was something we were predestined to do.
The shopping malls, the multiplexes, the pubs - that's not where our country is. I see our country in the face of the beggar-girl standing outside the entrance to Shoppers Stop looking through the glass at a world that must make no sense to her. Just as her world seems so distant from ours.
The more pertinent question -- whose world will prevail in the end? Will we get rid of them or will it be the other way around?
We are clearly out-numbered. So how much longer before they get us?
***
I've been hearing a lot about the rehabilitation of Mumbai's slum-dwellers. Nowhere is the overwhelming disparity between the haves and the have-not's more evident than in the city of Mumbai. (I haven't been to Calcutta, but they say its quite bad there too).
Poverty coupled with illiteracy is like a cancer that eats away at society - for which there is no cure; and treatment usually proves futile. The only solution is to take out those unwanted elements.
Adolf Hitler - he will always be remembered as a madman who perpetrated horrendous acts of evil in pursuit of an end, that to him was his idea of the perfect world.
Y'know, I've always wondered why Hitler never considered deporting the Jew's to some inhospitable region of the planet like Greenland or Antarctica? Why did he insist they be exterminated like vermin? Deportation would have been so much more convenient.
Was he really a madman ... or was he a genius who somehow did nothing right?
So, what then is my idea of the perfect world? Just like Huxley's Brave New World, I'd like it to be one where everybody is happy. But, as Huxley tells us, there is a cost attached to everything; a price to pay. And history has shown that the price of a perfect world is just too high.
***
I've always loved being close to nature ... high up on some mountain, or alone on a deserted beach. I remember how I felt sitting on a rock near the cliffs edge at Fort Aguada. Free - that's how I felt. Nothing else mattered.
But come back down to reality, and everything else matters.
They say if you don't like what you see, shut your eyes - shut your eyes and enjoy the ride as best you can. And that is exactly what so many of us today are doing.
Only problem with that, though, is: You have no idea where you're headed.
***
Said the Eye one day, "I see beyond these valleys a mountain veiled with blue mist. Is it not beautiful?"
The Ear listened, and after listening intently a while, said, "But where is any mountain? I do not hear it."
Then the Hand spoke and said, "I am trying in vain to feel it or touch it, and I can find no mountain."
And the Nose said, "There is no mountain, I cannot smell it."
Then the Eye turned the other way, and they all began to talk together about the Eye's strange delusion. And they said, "Something must be the matter with the Eye."
from: The Madman by Kahlil Gibran
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