Who is the deer?

It's a strange story of following your deer. I know I may sound offensive but it's true...all of us are deer. As a deer is meant to be grabbed by the strong jaws of one of the stronger animal we also keep waiting for that moment when some one or the other would take hold of us.

When we say we want to maintain a democratic environment don't we mean that we want our responsibilities to be taken care by some one else. Why do we want a leader if they don't serve the very purpose. If we choose leader so that we could be the deer of that chosen special one then we should think again. After all it hardly matters who ever owns this deer.

I hear people saying youth needs to come out and vote for their candidate or if they feel they are competent enough then contest in the election. In an interview a youth said, " It hardly matters for me who ever comes to the power as manifestos and back ground of all of them hardly have a difference." So this guy voted for the person who appeared the most handsome.

Let us peep into some of our neighbours. One of them is the finest example of failure of democracy where as the other own is a fine example of success of republican government. Have we reached a point where we need to give a thought to the way we chose our leaders? I don't have a definite answer but certainly I have some thoughts.

Worldwide I have seen countries with strict regulations which requires its citizens to do community service. Men are required to serve the defense while women are required to serve the community. I don't know if this activity brings in the strength to get out of the shackle of being a deer but certainly it increases the sense of being a martyr. I understand making a wishful thought is easy and implementing them is a lot difficult. We have several plans like NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), and Golden Quadrilateral, that were initiated in the right spirit. Yet again the deer within us overpowered and most of these plans remained at the first step. We need to give more thought around implementing rather than just planning things.

We need to mend the constitution and redifine rules to adjust with the changes around us. We don't want deer and neither do we want to sit idle.

So True but yet not the Truth

Truth is something which never needs a definition. It surfaces itself at any cost. Yet many of us remain unaware of the fact that what we consider the truth may not be complete on its own. It is this uncertainity that keeps us on bay and continues to encourage us for the search of that incomplete.

I was holed up in a similar situation sometime back and it is then when I came to realise that nothing is complete on its own. I was waiting for my friend to pick me up from the railway station when I came across this never lasting experience of three hours.

It was a bright sunny day when I landed in Ahmedabad, my flight being on time. My friend was supposed to pick me up from the railway station which was on the way to his home from airport. But fate had something levied in it and he was caught up in a meeting giving me a three hours of time to experience something new. While I stood there with my luggage I had people of all kinds around me. Civillians had a company of army personnels, rich had a company of brats and beggars and I had a company of a nice little family. As my shadow shortened nothing changed much. Faces changed but the categories (don't have the right word) did not. I regret that I had no camera to capture that moment but I am glad as well because had that been the case I would not have been writing this post.

Let me ask you a question; "How much will you pay to a cooly for carrying three suitcaes, five airbags and some more luggage.... say for a distance of 300 meters?" I guess you would be thinking he won't be able to carry so much on his own..ya true he used a trolley for carrying this stuff. So now your bet would be 60 / 70 rupees. This cooly took all these luggage for merely 25 rupees. The bargaining lasting more as an order. So the first truth which surfaced was India in its true sense hardly values all the work and still we say "India Shinning".

Even if we consider this wage rationalization to be justified in some sense or the other I don't know what would you say about this nice little family. The oldest man in this family (in his odd 60s) was sitting upright on the floor and managed to stand up without taking any support. He sat on the ground (in the way people sit during their morning ablutions) for nearly an hour and he seemed to be enjoying his style. I don't know about other young generations of the country but I can bet you I can not sit so long. If my guess is not wrong more than 75% of the youth won't be able to do so. All of us seem to be so fitness freak but how fit are we compared to this old man? Seems a little amusing but its really true, Indian youth seem to be loosing their strength to the work culture we have imbibed in ourself.

I also observed a couple of beggars enjoying their time and cracking jokes more than often. Their loud laugh caught the attention of many and their talk caught mine. One of the beggars threw a brand new slippers to the other and said mockingly "Look what I got from the train going to Godhra." So this is what the beggars have been doing don't know since how many years. Beggars or theives? no one knows the truth but one thing that I was pretty sure of was that i had started to hate the beggars. Not because they were beggars but because they had fake faces. Wait a minute... am I doing the justice? Obviously this is a cruel question but I have no answer to it.

Enough of this social questions. Let me share one fine moment as well. As I observed all these things I saw a group of students (perhaps +2 batch) gearing up for some sort of tour. I saw my school days in them and I was in a moment one among them. There were some guys trying to impress some of the girls and there were some cool dudes living within themselves and leaving their own impression. Other kids were enjoying the moment in their own way. Isn't this the golden time of their age? Ya definately it was and though all of us know this we are always in an uncanny mood not realising this at the nick of the time. It takes a lot of learning and experience to realise the hard facts of life.

Those three hours were definately like one of those moments when you get into a retrospection mood. May be you get answers to some of your doubts and at the same time increase a number of them. Still we continue to dangle between what is the truth and what is the complete truth.