Tuesday, October 6, 2009

What a morning??

Do we have plenty of anything? May be plenty of shit and filth…I spent 50 minutes in a rick this morning to reach Andheri Station. Normally it does not take more than 25. There wasn’t a single signal without a traffic jam. And, my rick driver was nothing but a reincarnation of Gandhi. We were badly stuck and there was a long queue of truck, bus and cars ahead of us waiting to get past the signal. I said to rick driver, “Why don’t you overtake the cars” (For the uninitiated, in India, often driving in a small vehicle like an auto, bike or a scooter is a smart thing to do. A big SUV is an even bigger pain in the ass, as the width of our roads is indirectly proportional to the increasing size of our cars. So rest assured to get stuck, if your ass is resting in a SUV)
The driver replied, “I will be heads on with the vehicles coming from opposite direction”
I said “But there are hardly any vehicles coming from that side”
He said, “If it comes, then????”
I said, “How many years have you spent in Bombay”
He replied, “Ten”
I said, “You will never be able to accumulate money for your family, if you care so much about others”
He said, “Why are you saying all shit? I have to care”
I got irked, “Care??? For what?? Why don’t you start preaching like Baba Ramdev”
He said, “I do follow him”
I said, “I am not telling you to follow him, I am telling you to be like him. You will remain like this for your life”
He said, “As if you are really happy, if you are a crorepati”
This is something, which can confound a westerner, more than anything else. We, Indians, have very easily bypassed all stages in Maslow’s need hierarchy model and no matter how poor we are; our only need is “need for self-actualization”

2 comments:

Aseem Sinha said...

hahahaha..tht conversation piece ws good..dunno bro, but slowly i hv also started appreciating spiritual quotient of our culture (by tht i dont mean i hv started following gurus n all)..bt yeah, Geeta makes sense, n when i read Shantaram, the spiritual dilemma catches attention.. loved the piece as always..

Renjith said...

You are slowly coming out of your shell. Despite the sheer rawness of the conversation there is an refined feel to the piece.

And the willingness to step into the shoes of the villain. Priceless