Long Term Parking

The Chinese believe that 'Three feet of ice not result from one day of freezing weather.'

Translated into regular English it means that a predicament is not formed without a period of events creating it. I couldn't agree any more. Everything around us is actually a result of letting things be and then suddenly waking up one fine day to realize that it's the wrong story.

Some months ago I was wondering what's it about the News Year's that makes us feel happy. I concluded that it could be the fact that life gives us an opportunity to set the clock back. Or may be it's the new chance we get at doing things the same way.

I think we are now finding it extremely difficult to deal with situations that have transformed into seemingly solution-less truths. Is there no way around them? Are we doomed to deal with them no matter what? Do people forget their place and start taking everything as a gospel truth and do whatever they feel like doing?

I’d have referred to the Bombay terror attack but I really don’t want to. I feel sick about the whole thing but that’s not really why I don’t want to talk about. I don’t like to read about it or talk about it now for I feel a chunk of people are trivializing it beyond repair. In case you have been doing some thing substantial and not following Barkha Dutt on We The People, let me bring you up to speed. She is going hammer and tongs at the whole thing {read a blogger's heart felt anger directed towards Ms. Dutt}. Every week she gets some doped out celeb who will shout his or her lungs out and ask for a movement of the people. Last week she had Gaurav Kapoor who was scared and he felt great that people around him were scared too as now they’d raise an alarm. He of course said that we shouldn’t vote and almost flipped out like Howard Beal from Sidney Lumet’s Network. Headlines Today has approached it in a refreshingly different manner; they have got celebs to do a mouth a terror proof take of our Preamble and cut a video to some plagiarized music.

Is there something that will come out of this? Or is this bad thing good for us for we will know what is bad for us and good that we’d react to this new found old bad finally? Why can’t we learn to ask the right question? Why can’t we do it the right way? I will tell you why…they still haven’t got us….they still haven’t attacked the true India. How can some of us say that now that they have got Bombay’s Taj they have attacked the heart of India? When they attacked Jaipur, New Delhi, Bangalore, Assam, no one made human chains, no one burnt candles and no one kept vigils. When we don’t know the true India, how can they attack the true India? I don’t want to ‘categorize’ the hurt but the fact remains that it doesn’t truly affect us till it truly affects us. So why should I react over zealously?

Is there someone who’d support me if I decided to sit in front of the Parliament like the Thais did in their airport? The question is will I support someone if they decided to sit out like the Thais? Thousands of them just sat down at the airport and threw the government out by forcing the courts to not only dismiss the people in power but also ban them from contesting any election for the next five years.

Here’s another example that will seal the deal. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has found out that Rs.384 crore was wasted on 8 highway projects allotted between 1998 and 2003. Is this some thing that we didn’t know? But now that we know this will this help us change it…I didn’t think so. Like the government will continue to follow the same set of rules again and waste the tax payers’ money we too will learn to live with it.

Imagine how many bullet proof jackets this money could have bought...

Imagine how many lives could have been saved...

Imagine the NSG could have bought a bloody aircraft to ferry them across the nation during emergencies rather than looking around for suitable transport...

Imagine what poor Barkha Dutt would have to come up with to fill the air space!