The headline read “Prime Minister Rahul Gandhi requests
Pakistan to relinquish Kashmir and Punjab”. I sighed and kept the fifty rupees
newspaper aside. It used to cost five in 2013, a ten times rise in six years. I
proceeded towards the university where I studied (?) once. Around fifteen
thousand students crossed me as I made my way through the campus to its central
area. I sat on the roof of a hostel, trying to imagine myself sitting on the
grass where now this hostel stands. Few more
inmates were lying around, some smoking weed, others with tablets. I was
listening to their conversation. One of them was a tech geek, who didn’t know
programming. Another was like an ‘every other student’, emaciated, just like I
used to be.
The geek spoke. No, speaking is something to be mentioned.
They were rarely talking, mostly chatting. So the geek spoke “hey this IRCTC is
a damned site, I logged in like-yesterday and the page is still loading!”
After typing a long chat on his tablet to distant friend, the other person thought it obliging to reply. “Yeah, you are lucky, because when I logged in before the
winter vacation, I could access the page after the vacation was over! What do
you expect from this government! All govt. sites are like this. (Btw IRCTC is a private website) Railways is
just anyhow continuing.”
“Who owns this railways?”
“Nobody owns railways! It belongs to a group of powerful
people. I saw it on YouTube”
And then they started castigating the government, and then the discussion moved to the university. Every system they were a part of was corrupt, and
their talk revealed that they were of the purest forms to ever walk the earth.
I received a call just then. It was my mother. She informed
me that my aunt had given birth to an engineer (i.e. a boy). He was enrolled in FIITJEE's extensive congenital training programme. He would be shown colorful
sketches of thermodynamic concepts and structure of polyethylene-m-tetra-chloro-phosphate.
I went to her house, pointed to his head and told her he’ll crack it! But instead
she heard he’ll crack IIT as this is what the prestigious coaching institute
had been telling her all day.
Next morning, failing to pay for the newspaper, I was surfing
the net and came upon a survey that presented another grim picture. It said “china
crushes Indian economy by overtaking her in the service sector, the only sector
left after agricultural sector committed suicide owing to heavy debts. It is
worth noting that industrial sector never existed in India. As a result IT
companies have closed their recruitment gates, which used to absorb a large
chunk of the teeming number of graduates manufactured
each year. Joblessness is back on the streets.”
It was hot in there. And I needed water for bathing. I went
to the market and after booking my number for water, I continued reading from
my laptop (yes, reading in the market from a laptop) there was this chotu from the nearby tea shop
calculating his earnings from an app in his smartphone. I asked him “do you
read or write?” He gave the expected answer. “But I can count my money in this
touch phone”, he continued, with special emphasis on the word touch. I adjusted
my ‘keypad-ed’ cellphone inside my
trousers. One of the last such sets. Vintage.
Feeling like a black and white character in a glittering world,
I continued reading the newsfeeds. At least I could read. “USA intimidated by
the aggressive market domination policy of the Chinese. On the other hand, the
US president tried unsuccessfully to avoid suspicions surrounding its
involvement in the unrest in central Asia, lured by the last drops of the
precious fuel petroleum.” I couldn’t take any more of this negativity.
Enervated by the vegetative state of affairs of the country, I was about to
close the browser when in noticed a minuscule text at the bottom of the page,
reading “paid news”. Now this was too much!
I got into the queue for water, as my turn came up. An
elderly man was behind me. He started speaking (the elderly talk,
frequently). “You see that nerd there?” The nerd in concern was with ear buds
in his head, which was banging like a rock-less punk. “Yeah, I do”. The elder
continued “kids like this are going to run the hell-heading country tomorrow. I
asked him who was the second last president of US and he replied Bob Marley.
They are ridiculous, this generation, ignorant and arrogant.”
I sighed. The youth feel that the elders as a spent force and
the elders think of the young as un-enlightened and ignorant fools. Everyone
blames others. I realized I am doing the same, blaming these two generations.
Anyways. Delhi and other such underdeveloped cities now have
no traces women. Legit. It is only filled with money centered people, and power
centered people. Mumbai has crumbled under its own crime lords’ empires.
Bangalore looks like as if an apocalyptic effect has swept through, creating
the new center of joblessness.
But it’s not all bad. People still believe that some miracle
will occur which will alleviate their problems. It’s good to keep faith and do
nothing else. Let the problems continue, there’s no need to solve it. Someone
like Gandhi will come out splitting his grave, wave his ‘lathi’ and everything
will improve. Corruption will melt away and will flow down the sewers, right
where it came from.
My negligible salaried job has a good incentive. It helps in
getting visas. I have got my visa ready to leave this country in its mess.
There’s no scope for any optimism here. I hope that corruption itself goes
corrupt, as I proceed towards my apartment with water to bath. The Independence
Day program is to be broadcasted a few hours from now, with a special
documentary on how freedom fighters fought hard to achieve the precious
independence which we now so indulgently enjoy.
