Tolerance comes for free

2006-10-03T01:29:00.001+05:30

I too had heard about it, the day Bombay was bombed. (They changed the name. A mistake it was, it appears. ‘Bomb-ay’ is pretty apt.) Yeah. So I don’t remember the date. But what I remember is that it was one of the most usual days of my life. It must have been.

Today is 2nd October and today I read 31 July ’06 edition of India Today at my home. ‘Tackling Pakistan’ was the cover-story of this edition with catchy frontlines like ‘should we strike across the LOC?’, ‘should we snap all diplomatic ties?’, ‘should we break off the peace talks?’, which made me go through every word of this edition. The text inside explained at length, how each of these steps is unfeasible, either because we are not prepared enough for a war or because we can’t afford to break ties with any nation, as in the long run, it backfires or some other similar reason. Every reason made perfect sense. But to top it all, one thing which the reporter talked about and which delighted me most was about Indians being very tolerant. Yep! We Indians are very tolerant. Very true. Thank you sir for that compliment! 7 serial blasts in a day. Fuck-a-day! 7 blasts in 11 minutes! But pigeons will still be fed on the Gateway of India the next morning , dubbawallahas will still be delivering the dubbas, LT’s will still be running on time, Bollywood will still be on its course of upholding the record of producing maximum movies in a year. There will still be schools, offices and parties the next day. You can’t hope to shake Mumbai, the fuckin spirit of Mumbai. Forget the 180 families, which suffered casualties, for a moment. We still have the rest one crore to prove our point, that how much tolerant we are. Hit us hard! We have padding enough! When else does a big population come handy? As long as you don't nuke us all together, we'll always be up and running, tomorrow morning.

180 families were mourning. And I was being called tolerant. And I would have been taking pride in it, had I been aware of that. I’m still proud though. There is no other choice, I guess.

Thinking for a title sucks

2006-05-14T16:18:00.000+05:30

It was around 1 p.m. when I was walking towards VH. As I was coming from my department, I was on a straight road. When I came near Kendriya Vidyalay, I saw a little kid, about 8 years old, stumbling, trying to hold a full size adult cycle. It was pretty evident that his father had asked him to hold the cycle and gone inside the school for some work. God knows, why he hadn't put it on stand, may be the stand was broken or something, but it wasn't, as far as I remember. Whatever, but for the whole length of the road, I kept looking at the kid, and then when I passed him, I kept turning and looking at him. The kid was so small that he was literally struggling in that killing heat to prevent that cycle from falling. He could have easily put the cycle sideways on the road and stood comfortably. But he didn't. Probably, his sincerity robbed him of his wits. And look at me, I kept looking at him but didn't go to help him put the cycle on the stand. Probably, his sincerity robbed me of my wits too. I think I didn't observe his face and his features, forget remembering them, but by god I know that he was one of the cutest kid I'd ever seen.

And by the time I'd reached VH, one of my doubts, whether not doing what God has made us capable of is actually a crime or not, was resolved. I was pretty much convinced now. It is a crime.

Different Strokes

Tolerance comes for free

Thinking for a title sucks