Wasted Life

The Great Indian tamasha is almost over, except for the last jitters in government formation. Mr. Karunanidhi is caught in the crossfire between his party and his three wives. At this ripe age of nearly eighty it is a tough call to satisfy all your better halves.

This is the first time I followed the elections from the word go to the end. It was riveting experience. I remembered the times when we were in our college days. We used to blow a storm over coffee cups over political matters. Born and bred in Kolkata, my heart was always red with anger against the capitalist imperialism. Maybe that was one of the reasons I never ever dreamt of going to U S of America. The other reason, which was more pronounced, was the death of Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead in 1995. That was the last nail in the coffin. The charm of USA was gone in the thin air.

As we moved in our career our views on politics got limited to the headlines on newspapers. It was just a passing look before we shifted to the last section of sports or the business news. The movements in stock market prices reflected in our blood pressure rather than the social injustices of the society we are a part of. We became a part of the society which enjoyed the “breaking news” on electronic media and felt satisfied of doing our bit by scribbling a bit in social networking sites – this writing is a perfect example of that.

We enjoyed the train blasts in Mumbai and wondered why do still people travel in trains, we saw the gruesome murder of young Arushi and hoped for some filthy gossips rather than finding out the real culprits, we saw the massacre of the twenty odd children brutally killed by some psychopaths in Noida, Delhi and wondered why the parents allow their children to work as household servants, we were glued to the television watching the rescue operation at Taj, Mumbai and then joined the candlelight protests at gateway of India and all along we had groups being formed in “Facebook” for each of these incidents.
And we did ourselves proud of becoming a “fan” of these groups.

Then after the elections we forecasted as wise men that India has voted for stability, secularism and good governance, although we never voted ourselves (1. Oh! it was just so hot outside, 2. How many times do we get such a long weekend, let's make the best out of it, 3. Thank goodness, it's a holiday, I had so much catching up to do.).

We went back to our cubicles doing our daily work, shopping, having fun with the satisfaction that we have played our role as an ideal citizen on India.

Have we lost the plot somewhere?
In Kolkata in the sixties people came out in the street, burnt buses, demonstrated against government because the bus fare was increased by ten paisa.
Were they not people like us, were they the youth who had lost their sense of direction? Who were those people who braved the bayonets for the sheer ideology of social justice?

All I know for sure is that they were not us, they were not the people who have lost their backbone to some cushy jobs and have made “speed money” a part of Oxford dictionary.