aditya kumar's weblog

Sitting in the hospital waiting for the doctor to show up, I see a 2 year old kid walking over across the room to the water cooler. Its with one of those “push-button” taps, which require quite a push to serve water or else give out a few drops if you don’t push hard enough.

While the kid is amused discovering those few drops that came out of nowhere, an old man, one in his late 60s, comes and takes the kid away from the tap, much to the protest of the kid.

A few minutes later, the kid is at the tap again. The old man comes back too. The cries and the protests of the kid notwithstanding, the man does what he thinks he should do.

And a few minutes later, again.

A 60 something man. A 2 year old Kid. And the stubborn resistance of the human mind.

An hour later, a girl who seems 2 years old or so, walks to the water cooler and tries to push the tap again. And while she’s at it, her mother does something that takes the girl by surprise. She holds the girl by the shoulders and amidst wild protests by the kid, walks her back to the seat.

In a fast food chain restaurant, standing in a queue, overheard a couple of 30-something software engineers (or the likes) deciding on the menu. A sentence should suffice —

“yeh le le — this combo has 4 items compared to that one, which has only 3 items, for the same price”.

This sums up, how an Indian mind works once confronted with the menu.

In Patna and Gaya, LLB students go on a rampage because they aren’t allowed to cheat by the authorities. Yes, it is the same Gaya where, in 500 BC, Gautam Buddha attained enlightenment. After 2500 years, surely, this is some kind of enlightenment the students are looking for. It also gives you a picture of how strong this section-in-making, of one of the pillars of our democracy will turn out to be.

I think this is exactly what Shashi Tharoor meant when he mentioned in the first page of his book, “The Great Indian Novel” that “India is a highly developed country in an advanced stage of decay”.