JOIN USAll of us know that a brisk walk early in the morning is good for health. The cool and fresh air, as yet unsullied by vehicle exhausts rejuvenates us while the stillness of the morn, broken only by the chirpings of the birds soothes our noise battered eardrums. It's a time for quiet contemplation. On the ways of our mad, mad world.
The mind drifts towards a recently received e-mail. “We live in a nation where pizzas reach homes faster than ambulance and police. Where you get a car loan at five per cent and where rice is sold at more than Rs 40 a kilogram, but where a SIM card is free. Where our footwear is sold in air-conditioned showrooms, but the vegetables we eat are sold on the footpath.”
Haven’t we all seen those pizza delivery boys driving like mad, endangering not only their lives, but also that of other people on the roads, in their race against time, because a delayed delivery means the pizza is free for the customer while the amount is deducted from the delivery boy’s salary? Customer satisfaction, yes, but at the cost of a human life?
Whereas, in a truly life and death situation, the ambulance with a seriously ill patient could not reach the hospital in time because of a traffic jam or because traffic was stopped to enable a VIP convoy to pass. VIP time and life is more important than a human life!
Poverty may deny a man of his food, but seems to be no deterrent when it comes to possessing a cell phone. Even beggars flaunt their handsets in their outstretched hands.
Talking of beggars, one is tempted to come up with some more one-liners. “We live in a nation where the scale of corruption beggars description” –– where even beggars’ rehabilitation centres are swept clean by greedy, inhuman officials; where an event of international importance like the commonwealth games provides fertile ground for corrupt hounds to loot millions; where elected representatives are traded like cattle and rounded up in pens (resorts) to prevent them from “straying”; where the lust for power overrides all norms of civilised conduct; where billionaire industrialists build homes that reach out to the heavens, in cost and height, while the worlds largest slums lie sprawled at their feet.
Quite literally, the heights of obscenity. Jai ho India!