The Great Middle Class Suffering

I belong to possibly the largest demographic group in this world; a group which transcends national, race, ethnic, gender, class and caste boundaries – The Middle Class.

The numbers give the members a sense of camaraderie, a sense of belonging. In this belonging they collectively suffer from a common malaise – the label of The Middle Class.

Almost everyone who belongs to this group – me included – strongly desires or wants or dreams about breaking free and jump out off this group. For someone, the lure is wealth, for some power and for others fame.
Very few are truly content with the label of The Middle Class but for most it has become a curse.

This morning Junior died

I have been meaning to get a fish tank or fish bowl for a while now. Earlier, the wife had objections as where we would keep the bowl / tank. That’s when I had decided to put the bowl in the toilet. Ughh! Later the wife came around to accepting that I wanted to have a fish tank in the house. But then, like with everything else in my life, I vacillated endlessly.

A couple of week ago when I was in Pune I finally took my brother-in-law and bought four fish - two blackmoors and two gold fish. I moved the fish in a bag to Mumbai and installed them in a new acquired fish tank. My niece who was visiting gave me four smaller fish for my collection. After a couple of days of observing them I named the two blackmoors Ritchie Blackmore (after the rocker) and Junior, since the second was a little smaller. The gold fish I named Frisky and Digger.

I fed them regularly, installed a pump to oxygenate the tank and cleaned the tank weekly. Every morning and then every couple of hours I came by to watch them swim and generally have a lot of fun in their new home.

This morning when I woke up I noticed that Junior was looking very listless; floating around without the energy that I had got so used to. I knew he was not well. When he didn’t eat when I fed them all I somehow knew he wouldn’t make it. When I came back home in the evening he was floating on his side – surely dead. What could the cause be? Fungus? Over eating? Bad conditions in the tank?

His friends and companions of his new tank seem to be mourning for him and swimming half mast. Do animals grieve? Why do humans insist on having pets which rarely ever out live them? Do they have a fetish for death and the dead?

My Freedom, Your Right

The chasm between what I take for granted as my freedom and what another believes is his right has always been narrow and filled with the rubble of conflict. And recently this fragile divide has almost disappeared, with freedom and right trespassing onto each others turf.

There are two incidents which have sparked off this debate; one the publishing of the cartoon in the Danish paper, and two the nude paintings by renowned artist M. F. Hussein. In both cases the conflict has been between an artist’s freedom of expression and the religious sentiments of a community. Art and artists have for ever used icons from several spheres of life, religious, spiritual, familial, industrial and others as symbols. Artists have also, by and large, supported a much more liberal view on issues like morality, ethics and even politics. Rarely has art, whether it be painting, sculpture, literature, music or even films ever been created with any malicious intent to hurt the fine sentiments of individuals or groups of people. And never has it been intentionally used as propaganda to incite people. Hence the volume and nature of protests against these two incidents have been completely disproportionate and inappropriate. It is embarrassing to know that even governments are being cowed down to make statements against these incidents. Does this reflect on the maturity of the people at large and question the unbiased position that democratically elected governments are supposed to take? Hasn’t art, both ancient Indian and European, depicted deities in the nude? So how come modern societies consider it justified to resort to pathetic violence as a means of protest.

I acknowledge the rights of individuals and communities to protest against what they consider an injury to their sentiments. But is burning and plundering the only means available to them. Why can’t they resort to voice their displeasure using the same medium which gave rise to their fury in the first place? Isn’t it recognition of a mature, civil society, which uses all available legal channels and the numerous forms of mass media: print, video and the Internet, to battle what they consider an infringement of their rights? Any act of violence seems terribly reactionary and a medieval form of protest, which doesn’t directly impact the alleged perpetuator in the first place but only, serves to inconvenience and often cause bodily harm to innocent masses.

But more importantly, are these two incidents, individually or collectively, so important to receive the kind of attention, both negative and positive, that they have. Where were all those people who are collecting in large numbers in the streets of nations, shouting and rioting, when countries like Afghanistan and Iraq were being mercilessly bombed, by the forces of apparent guardians of freedom and democracy, killing thousands and thousands of innocents? Shouldn’t all of us be raising a much more virulent protest against the bombings, which have taken away the rights of the people to live so that a couple of countries and their powerful leaders can enforce their freedom? Where were the politicians then who coyly refrained from taking a stance against these atrocities? Or are the cartoons and the paintings of more significant nature to the people and governments?

Excess Redundant Manpower

The University of Poona, where I am working on an assignment, employs this one person whose only function is to go around the University and cleaning the phones.

Every two weeks he makes a visit to each and every office / department. He pulls out a cloth and wipes the telephone instrument with some liquid detergent. He also applies a solution from a little bottle on the mouthpiece of the instrument which leaves behind a floral smell. This is in addition to at least one peon in each department who cleans all of the office infrastructure but the telephones.

Can anything you have seen beat this example of how ridiculously redundant and completely wasted some of the resources are in the offices of most government agencies?

As an addendum consider this. The Maharashtra Governments wage bill is more than 50% of its annual budgeted expenditure!

Discipline 101

I visit Pune every week on an assignment I have taken up there. As anyone who has been to Pune knows, two wheelers rule the roads in Pune.

Most of the signals at the traffic junctions have timers on them, which are tell how much more time for the signal to turn to green. Extremely useful and saves fuel. Also these signals are powered by solar panels.

The other day I was at a signal which was to turn green in 10 seconds. A young man on a zippy two wheeler comes along with his girlfriend as his pillion, stops for a second at the signal and then drives right through it, knowing very well that it would turn green in a few more seconds.

What is that makes one break simple rules like this with such alacrity? Is this blatant disregard for law isolated cases or simply endemic?

I wonder what kind of citizens such individuals would go to make.

Hierarchies of Justice

On Monday night September 12th, we were robbed. We live on the top floor of a three storey building in a quiet area of Andheri. All this time we had scoffed at suggestions received from all and sundry about putting grills to our windows. We wanted to breathe in the sense of freedom and safety that we thought our third floor apartment would provide. We were wrong.

That night some bare-footed bugger walked into the window of our study either from the overheard terrace or climbed up the pipes along the walls. Surprisingly all he walked away with was my laptop, with all the invaluable data and memories I had collected on in over the last two years, leaving behind another newly purchased laptop, digital camera and Discman.

The next morning on discovering the theft I lodged a police complaint. That’s when I faced the unfair treatment meted out to the submissive and the poor. The cops met the watchman who was on duty that night, and gave him two slaps before the man could even say anything. When I stopped the cops from what I thought was completely not done they snapped back at me and told me to mind my own business and let them carry out their investigation.

The watchman, a scrawny little fellow from some small little village in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh, barely literate, could rarely speak confidently. He was not even being suspected of the crime. His only fault was he was asleep on his duty, instead of being ever so watchful. But if a man does two shifts of 8 hours each, every day, only so that he can earn Rs. 1600 a month, it is but expectable that he is going to doze off while at work.

Can we call ourselves a fair democracy where the poor and the weak are always under suspicion? Does it give the cop or anyone in his position to slap someone only because he is sure that he will not have the courage to standup and question the slap? Will there come a time when the economically and socially underprivileged have as strong a voice as all of us? Well I hope so.