In the future not very distant

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.