By Robert Clements
Oops, What an Extravaganza…!
Two incidents got my attention in the last week, one a lavish wedding and the second a bridge going nowhere, and I’m going to talk about both, so here goes:
Was enjoying my toast and butter this morning, when my wife told me, “He’s been staring at you for the last ten minutes!”
“Who?” I asked, then realised it was Noah, my daughter’s dog, who is kept at my home, whenever my daughter and family go out.
I looked down and saw his eyes, steadfast on the piece of toast I was about to bite into and realised how easy it was not to get bothered by a hungry stare.
Today’s papers have hardly any news than details of the lavish pre-wedding bash a billionaire is giving his son. Millions have been paid to performers to entertain guests at a series of planned events and the papers carry pages and pages on pictures of dignitaries arriving and expenses involved.
All this while millions upon millions of our countrymen, with no food in their belly stare at hopelessness. Nobody notices their hungry stares, because we have also told the world that reports of where we stand on the hunger index is all fabricated.
But the stares are real.
Around ten years ago, I was elected president of an international club, in which my installation would have been held in a posh hotel. A few weeks before the event, I saw the ‘stares’! They came from the old and ill people around the area where I lived, and I told the members we would have my installation in the open pergola of a local park, call these old people for refreshments and distribute four-pronged walking sticks to them, with money we would otherwise have spent on a lavish five- star installation. The members agreed, and what a joy it was that for the first time in the history of the Rotary where an installation was held in a shed with plastic sheets shielding us from the rain, but with all the seats filled with the old and needy.
The next day seeing them walking around the park for the first time in many years was a joy to behold. My club had noticed the ‘stares’, looked back and addressed their needs.
Today it has almost become a crime to get affected by the ‘stares’ as those who fight for the rights of the poor and marginalised, are branded with all sorts of names and even jailed. Priests, activists, and social workers, whose hearts are filled with compassion are despised and terrorised.
How are we allowing ourselves to reach this state, where only these garish activities of the rich make news, while help given to those unfortunates are viewed as a crime?
Noah, stares at me, his eyes steadfast on my last piece of toast, and I guiltily give it to him, even as he lifts his head, then looks at me with grateful eyes!
And here’s the second incident, when the nation gulped and said ‘Oops!’ Yes, Oops, is what the people in Mumbai said, who drove their cars across the newly repaired Gokhale bridge, connecting Andheri East and West, drove high above the railway line, and then found to their shock they could not drive to Juhu, because the Juhu arm of the bridge was six feet lower!
Wait a moment folks, this is not 2000 years ago, not a hundred years ago, but today! A day and time when we could have fed all the data into a small laptop and got all the measurements for construction before the work was started.
The bridge is a concrete example, and pun intended, of policies going wrong, especially the ignoring of checks and balances which tell us if our beloved country is going in the wrong direction.
One check that is being removed quickly, are thinkers, intellectuals, and journalists. Instead of heeding them, we think they are anti-national. Far from it. These men and women have only the betterment of their country in mind. Instead of listening to them, we act like spoilt children, spoilt by a misguided, ill-informed mandate, fed on fake news and non-issues:
“Mother,” says the spoilt child returning from school, “A few boys were making fun of me!”
“I’ll get them removed!” says the mother, “How dare those children make fun of my son,” shouts the mother as she storms into the school, I am the managing trustee’s wife “Expel them!”
“Do you know what they said?” asks the flustered teacher, “They told your son he was wearing his pants the wrong way!”
“How dare they!” shouts the mother.
“And your son was!” says the teacher.
“It doesn’t matter, throw them out!” says the mother.
And that is what is happening in our country. What we are seeing in that misaligned bridge is the beginning of many results of pants worn wrong like that child.
Just as we build statues, memorials and monuments to extoll acts of triumph and victory, we need to preserve this misaligned, misjudged piece of concrete work as a museum piece. Because, this can either be a turning point, as we the people become aware of where we are headed, and where we will land or sadly we will continue turning a blind eye, will bring rope ladders, pullies and other contraptions, stop our cars, jump down that six feet, turn smilingly and help our obliging spouses and aged parents down, telling the world with an artificial smile, “So what?”
So what if unemployment statistics show a huge rise, so what if we are placed somewhere last in the poverty index, so what if we are losing our freedom of speech. So what?
Even as you say ‘oops’, and if you are one of those who have been staring fixedly at the pre-wedding extravaganza pictures, decide where you want the nation to go, as you go to the polls soon..!
The Author conducts an Online Writers and Speakers Course. For more details send a thumbs-up to him on WhatsApp 9892572883 or [email protected]