Stand Up and be counted as Human

                                         Stand up and be counted a Human

It was Saturday late evening-one holiday less as this year Janmashtami had fallen on Saturday. Another 5-6 hours to go before midnight to welcome baby Krishna. The temple in the neighbourhood wore a festive look with people of all ages, groups and genders singing bhajans. But within our colony there was another event-not a welcome but a farewell party hosted by a colony gentleman to celebrate his promotion and his transfer to Singapore thereof.  It did seem strange that he hosted his own farewell party; maybe he wanted to garner all the ‘fare thee well’ good wishes for his new assignment. The party went on till midnight till the crackers went off from the nearby temple, heralding the birth of baby Krishna. The merry makers trooped out in a hurry not to miss out the festivities at the temple. In their great hurry, they  peppered the lawns with paper plates and paper cups - with wasted food and beverages as most of them  had piled more food onto the plates than what they  could consume and had filled the cups with aerated sweet water any number of times. The leftover food on the plates scattered all over the lawns would have easily fed at least fifty hungry stomachs. It is generic to a majority of Indians to do more than ample justice to the lavish feast spread on all festive occasions as their only way of enjoying the party and acknowledging their wholesome appreciation of the host’s generosity. When Indians see food spread on the table, they charge at it as though they were eyeing food for the first time.

But today our colony had a double bonus with the Krishna celebrations complementing the evening party. Who can miss out on the prasad of Kheer specially prepared on this occasion? (it had been dinned into our ears from our childhood that baby Krishna likes and gorges on milk products-butter, khoya, ghee and kheer -with no fear of high cholesterol levels-and therefore we should partake of  the prasad after it is offered to the him). To the chanting of “Radhe Radhe Radhe Radhe Govinda” everyone enjoyed the saffron aromatized kheer served on bioplates which were later strewn all over the precincts of the temple.  

The next morning was a Sunday morning and when I went out for walk, the green lawns were hardly visible, covered as they were with heaps of plates strewn all over. So it was on the streets adjacent to the temple. It was the Sabbath day (even the fervent Hindutva followers  observe a day of rest on Sunday in line with Christianity and the Jewish religion) and so the litter was to be there the whole day spreading the stench of the putrid food all through the colony. Poor baby Krishna, I thought to myself, he must be wondering why he had to take birth to keep his promise “ Sabhavami Yuge Yuge”(i.e “ In order to deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I advent Myself millennium after millennium”). This is our Swachh Bharat, waiting for photo-ops in the next three weeks to observe the first anniversary of this great movement pioneered by our PM last year on Gandhi Jayanti. The gentleman who gave the grand farewell party would be by now on his way to sparkling Singapore, leaving behind the Aswachh Bharat as his final contribution. Why no bins with lids were kept on the lawns for the plates to be dropped?  Why no one was present to monitor the clearing up of the mess after the party was over? How it never crossed the mind of any one of the merry makers who all hail from educated and fairly well- to -do homes not to litter a public place? Can such an atrocious action be even dreamt in Singapore where the host had gone to settle down and where cleanliness is synonymous with godliness? I am no prophet but I can foresee how this same gentlemen on his return to his native land after six months in Singapore will cock a snook at Indians and lament that all the perfumes of Singapore cannot wash way the stench of these ‘dirty’ Indians.

It is time we confront the truth that there is something rotten in the state of India. The drift towards anarchy is visible on all sides and for most of us it remains like “darkness visible” as we turn a blind eye to it. We have no eyes for perfection in anything we do. Barring our Space scientists and a few intellectuals who are never seen but whose voices are heard like that of the invisible nightingale, we are by nature indifferent to exactness, precision and excellence in all our activities. Even a safety pin made in India cannot pierce through a nainsook that is used for babies wear. All the pins I buy from a shop are invariably blunt and do not even hurt my finger. Once I had the discomfiture of taking my German friend to buy a pair of salwar kameez, the Indian equivalent of the formal Western wear of tops and trousers. She looked at the readymade suits and was surprised that none of them had a double hemming at the raw edges. She did not select any dress from the hundreds of garments the fawning shopkeeper laid before the foreigner. Later she was keen to purchase a miniature sitar as a gift to her husband. With great difficulty, we found one in a plush shop in Connaught Place that sold musical instruments. Before we brought it home, it had split right through the centre. That is what we call “Made in India”!.

 My kirana shop where sacks of rice, pulses, flour, sugar etc are kept, is a free place for rodents to nibble at them and leave behind their droppings. Those among us, who can afford, go for the packed provisions though they are priced twice-high. Sub standard fares are given in most of the restaurants and no one bothers about the quality of food served. Rare are the occasions when a big fish like the Maggie noodles is hauled up.  The vendors in the push cart bring B-grade vegetables and fruits. These months are best for apples, pears, plums and apricots. But the best of all these fruits are not for us as they are exported and we are left with apples, hard as cricket balls, juiceless pears , withered plums and dried apricots. Even at the height of the mango season, the aam admi gets mangoes that go with his ‘aam’ status. This is what we call “grown in India”!

Our schools and colleges see more absentees of teachers than students. The condition of the classrooms (leave the posh Public schools) is pathetic. A leading college of the prestigious Delhi university lacks good clean toilets, working fans in the class rooms( leave aside air conditioners)and clean drinking water. Who cares so long as the Principal and the top administrators are provided with these basic amenities-what we should term as luxuries! There is no place in the pecking order of the Institution to say the buck stops here, for no one assumes responsibility. The attitude of our government workforce which is the largest in the nation is “sab chalta hai”(“one has no expectations whatsoever and everything goes, nobody cares about what anybody thinks or does”).  The Nationalized banks have their distinct work culture, where irrespective of the number of clients standing in a queue to withdraw their own deposited money, the clerk at the counter is busy on his cell phone or takes one of his endless tea breaks or “paan’ breaks before attending to the patient customer. The passbook entries which are all computerized do not give any clear information about credits and deposits and one has to have a computerized memory to look at the figures and draw the inferences.  This is true of the government owned post offices, hospitals, ticket booking counters etc where service to the aam admi has the lowest priority. If – God forbid- the government owned telephone service gets out of order or if there is a power failure or water supply problem, our complaints have no receivers; on the other hand the complainant receives the message that s/he should press 1,2, 3,…according to the nature of her/his complaint and is given a three digit number as the complaint number for future reference. After 24 hours of futile waiting, the complainant phones only to hear the repetition of  the computerized instruction1,2,3,… and there is no way to refer to the  complaint number that had been given to him/her the previous day. Instead, the faceless voice gives a new complaint number at the end of the 1,2, 3…pressing drill. This is “work ethics in India”.

Ironically this same workforce, if they work for a multinational or a private industry, turns out to be efficient, disciplined and courteous which goes to prove that we do not suffer from the Hamlettian dilemma as to what, how and when to do or not to do. Our decision to cultivate a distinct work culture that has no connect with the customer’s needs is our own choice and the customer has no option but to accept this choiceless choice imposed on him and her.

I shudder to think what will happen if the new slogan coined by our PM “China’s pain, India’s gain” becomes a reality.  I wish someone weaves a magic around our people and destroy our “sab chalta hai” attitude and replace it with a new slogan of “service before self”?   I wish someone move us out of the popular mindset “chalti ka naam gadi”(whatever  moves is a vehicle) and inspire us to make gadi that chalti hai. I wish someone cleanses our minds and removes the cobwebs of lethargy, slovenliness, indifference, greed, deceit and makes our minds sparkle with energy, cleanliness, commitment, altruism, generosity, truthfulness and sincerity.

Can that someone be found? Where has that someone to come from?  Do we wait for a new Mahatma or a holy avatar to raise our spirit and infuse us with courage, inspiration and enlivenment?  The answer is a positive Yes, because  ‘that someone’ is not outside of us but is within us. It may seem fanciful and idealistic to recognize ‘that someone’ within us, but that is the truth. Whenever we have to raise ourselves, it is easy to cringe back and say that it is beyond us than make the effort to achieve higher standards. It is in the effort to raise our own set bar, we become human in the sense  Shakespeare speaks of Man (in the generic sense)as “the paragon of animals”, noble in reason, infinite in faculties, admirable in action and movement, godly in apprehension and feelings. Stand up India, exhorts the PM. But before that let us stand up and be counted a human.

If the earlier part of this article sounded pessimistic and forlorn, it was intended to make us confront reality as we see around us today. But the latter part is in conformity with my belief that we are pessimists by experience but optimists by nature.