The Gear Grind Scroll
Everyone's brain works more or less
in a similar fashion. Involuntarily all our life we keep thinking all the time
of some damn thing or the other. At any point of time, a good hundred thoughts
enter the cerebral cortex, are processed and let out of the other end. But
writers as a class stand out from the rest by doing something different. When
the cognitive processing happens, the roster is scanned, a few of them are
picked, gripped by the collarbone, marshalled and finally sentenced to death.
The paper is the gallows, pen the accommodative hangman and death is nothing
but the output that comes out in the form of ink.
The shrewd one of the reading lot may nonchalantly observe "The ones that don’t come out in ink, come out through
speech or action". To him pace I say "My dear chappie, I never
denied that. Say what you want, but we writers are still a class above the
rest. I honestly don’t have an explanation to back up my claim on the written
word's pre-eminence over the spoken one. Probably I fancy
myself as a writer more than an aspirational humourist who wishes to jump on to
the Stand-up Comedy Bandwagon that has become a sort of new cultural rage in
the country, and a new career option to pursue in the last couple of years.
Only time will tell if it’s a mere fad or here to stay. Anyway if you are
interested to know, lie low and read below".
On this poetic note, as already promised in one of my
earlier memoirs, certain unformatted ruminations aided and abetted by my
panache for adjectival felicity are soon to take shape in the form of literary
output.
What I choose to pen down this time, are some of my causal
irritants. Certain behavioural and habitual tendencies of Indians, some on a
daily basis, that I am forced to put up with. I will take the liberty to
generalize my statement by tweaking it as 'We all are
forced to put up with'. But please note that there is only a certain
amount of latitude for my tolerance. Mind you once the threshold is
breached….Beware. !
"What will you do if the
threshold is breached, rather for that matter what can you do?"
enquires another bird sardonically. Well as a matter of fact, nothing!
Indians will never change. You can scream your poor heart out from the rooftop
but nothing is going to change. People will be the same.
The bottomline is as
simple as that. What you are complaining about now is what you will probably
complain when you turn 75. Well in that case, atleast let me use this a
platform to let out some of the steam, if that’s a small consolation I can
derive out of it!
So one-by-one I will start offloading my pet peeves that
adorn the scroll of parchment.
Chapter 1: The Whistle
Blowing Over-Zealous Vehicular Guardian
When at the wheel, and nearing journeys end in the basement
of an establishment – Office, Mall, Friends Apartment Complex, Shopping Complex
etc. the last thing you want is to be heckled into bringing your car to a stop
at a dedicated spot which is decided by the chap in charge of vehicular control
at the spot. Let us take office for example. Every day when I make the
curvilinear descent into B-3 or B-4 as the previous two levels are always
packed to the brim with diligent office-goers and also attributable to the fact
that it is well into afternoon as I work in the EU timezone, the security guy
who was otherwise sitting on a plastic chair in a sort of surfeited trance (probably after
loading in his daily luncheon calories), jerks into a fit of violent spasm, as
he sights my car rounding up, and nearly breaks the world record for the
sitting high jump! The next thing that happens is the whistle which was hanging
on his neck automatically shifts to his lips, and he starts whistling away to
glory. As such I have no objection to his whistling, so I ignore it and seek
the nearest open parking space and place my car. But what piques me to the
dickens is what follows next. The fellow nears you, settles there and cocks an
eyeball at you luridly while patiently waiting you to disembark. I don’t know
if he felt insulted that I ignored his whistle, but I don’t care. I didn’t make
any mistake. I see there are many open parking spaces and find one to lodge my
car. So I gather my bag and get out. The mistake every amateur basement
car-parker would do is to look back at him and have a word if everything is ok.
The minute you do that god bless your soul! He (the security guy) will start an
essay stating a hundred reasons why he (the car driver) should not park in that
designated parking slot. Either he says the car behind you won't
have enough space to manoeuvre itself out, or the car in front won't have the bandwidth to reverse, or that his car is a trifle
too close for comfort that the passenger seat of the car in the juxtaposed car
can't be opened. In other words, to me it seems as if he
needs to show that he is not just a normal security guy who assists in car
parking but that he goes over and above his duty in ensuring that the quality
of car parking has met ISO standards. No good to man or beast. Period. In
reality, the best course of action with both parties is to main an air of
respectable reticence and life would go on as usual. The car behind me will
manoeuvre itself out, without any issues like the way it has been doing the
rest of the 364 days of the year, the car infront of you will have acres of
space to reverse and tool away, and the chap going to take the honorary seat of
the passenger car adjacent will probably not even notice that there is a red colored
Swift next door. With experience, I have learned that the best approach is to
simply ignore his presence and walk away. Es'chewing the
fat', the trick helps! If you got the pun :-)
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