The run of things............

An interesting & but not necessarily the most pleasant place to be in on a weekend is the shopping complex at Jayangar, Bangalore. It is pure unadulterated chaos, amidst which you can watch people of all sizes, types & hues spending time wandering around, the place.The conservative and modern jostle for space. The staid salwar to the trendy jeans cry for your attention. You can see rural folk, who stares in awe to the settled modern Bangalorean who try's to look cool, hiding loads of vulnerability, behind false smiles and excited chatter........
I avoid that part of the city, if possible, but was forced to go, to get a piece of hardware for my new home, which was apparently available, in a by lane which skirts the complex. After my wife, managed to squeeze our tiny car between a Corolla & and a Xylo we set forth & almost immediately bumped into an old lady conversing with a uniformed cop…………
The conversation in Kannada, between them, was most interesting. The lady’s car was parked on the wrong side of the road, to which the policeman was objecting. The lady’s defense was that, her son had gone to buy shoes & there was nowhere else to park, so the deed was done. The cop would not buy the story & attempted to hand her a ‘traffic violation’ ticket. The lady not only refused to accept the ticket but roundly admonished the policeman for not respecting her age! She went on to moan the dropping standards of behavior in Bangalore & so on.
The other day a young student was caught copying & rightly punished. He came to me and wept copious tears of self pity. After calming the chap down, I asked him, why a bright kid like him, had resorted to a stupid thing like copying? He said ‘Because, I did not know the answer!’ Sound logic, one must admit.
In India we seem to have developed a thought process, wherein we rationalize that rules are for other people and as long as we are going fine, it does matter. That we are subverting the system does not seem to have sunk home to many. Eventually the malice will come home to roost………………………..
Many a distinguished person has wrestled with this seeming idiosyncrasy amongst educated and well read Indians to hit at systems developed for our good & concluded that, we are yet to develop a national spirit, because we were occupied by ‘foreigners’ for almost a thousand years. It also helps that people feel that they can get away with breaking the law. That is accountability is a concept that is not well developed.
There are many in this country who feels that Ramalinga Raju, the ex- head honcho at Satyam Computers, should receive preferential treatment because he addressed some social issues. That he defrauded thousands of investors is forgotten! It is like saying that Adolf Hitler, despite gassing six million Jews to death, should be viewed kindly because he gave the Germans the Volkswagen and Autobahns! I’ve have not heard of logic that is more misplaced…………….

Till we become a more enlightened democracy, I’m all for Lee Kwan Yew’s concept of dealing with offender’s with a stick and jettisoning our policy of appeasement, because it would get us no where, as Winston Churchill says:

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last!

I was looking for the old lady & the cop when we returned to our vehicle a short while later. They had gone along with the car. I hope it had been towed away to the nearest police station!