We appall the world with our moral, physical, ethical weaknesses!

A few years back I had caught an Oprah Winfrey show where an eye catching woman, flashing diamonds, took the audience on a tour of her house. I still shudder to recall those images. That lady had a small dog and one of her loos was chock-a-block with small, black pellets. You guessed it…it was dried dog poo! Probably years old! And the rest of the interior matched that filth encrusted bathroom….things had gone so much out of hand that that woman came on the show and faced the disgust and horror of strangers to ask for professional aid in cleaning up herself and her home. I thought she should have burned down her house and started afresh!

Reminds me of Indians and India…we have let things get so much out of hand that we too have years of excreta jamming up all our systems and now look at each other and debate about what is to be done! The frailer ones decide to jump ship and emigrate…others just continue to exist in this unwholesome set up.

Nothing works here….and even when we are torn apart and blown up into bloody chunks, the survivors and onlookers debate!

If debates could replace action then we would be the most efficient people on the planet…the TV each day covers people from various fields…debating! Endless repetitions of what happened and why and how! What should be done, and can be done and how to do it!

Our politicians breast beat in public and apologise and…debate! What their party has done, and how and why they are superior to the other parties. And the only time their vacant eyes show steely determination, it is when they are direct contenders to the “kursi”….the rest of the time, they are on auto pilot. You can blow up their public to kingdom come and they would go about their business as if all was peachy perfect!

Its been a fortnight since the Indian public was ambushed and attacked, as it went about its business, by trained militants now proven beyond doubt to have come in from Pakistan …and we debate! Pranab Mukerji says that India will not tolerate any of this any longer. So what are we doing now? Aren’t we tolerating? And enduring? And what a fine message we are delivering to a world wide audience….come and kill us when you please and as you please and in as many innovative ways as you can dream up…and we will debate!

We are a scared nation who make public displays of lamenting and have the memories of goldfish…lasting precisely 5 seconds!

We are in deep, deep trouble.

Pakistan is showing far more fire and mettle….it will not give us Dawood. It will not send the ISI chief here although it is so very very sad about what went on here… where is the proof? All know about its policy towards terrorism…Pakistan has never been its advocate and will wipe out terrorism from the face of the earth….excuse their tiny training camps in their backyards….national security matters, you see!! Overlook the fact that Kasab is singing like a canary and spilling all the beans, in between calling out to his mother. Pakistan wants proof! And Pakistan always gets what it wants! So we aam Indians can like it or lump it! Life is unfair, get used to it!

We are going to get strafed again and we will catch a glimpse of hell on earth…the unluckier ones will get a bellyful of the terrorist might and in that aftermath too…we will debate!

We will continue to have no stomach for fights, and we will discuss fair play and dissuade the hotheads amongst us that anger never achieved anything, we will debate and backpedal and discuss terrorism till it feels like an old friend…and wait to be blown up again…so that we can again congregate and light candles and march and abuse our leaders and give vent to all the emotions that have no outlet ordinarily and wait again for some more bombs! After all we are a billion strong…can’t we spare a thousand odd countrymen every few months to some terrorist activity? Ha, ha..where is your sense of humour!

Circular paths! Retracing our steps over and over again! The sheer futility of life itself!

Whom can we call and where can we air the disgusting cesspool of our lives to get some professional help? Where is Oprah? Let us take her on a guided tour and show her the mockery we have made of our lives....let the audience gasp with loathing….who lives in homes like ours?

I feel a deep connection with that poor doctor who made it his business to check security in cabs and is now in police custody! He is trying to make a difference….he is fighting back. He realized that nothing would shake off our immense lethargy and inertia and tried to do his bit. Let the man off, for Christ’s sake and go catch some terrorists!

Aren’t we stereotypical bullies? All bullies are cowards…so we let other countries wallop us around and cringe! And when we catch someone weaker, don’t we just come into our own? Publicly lynching cycle thieves, dragging young boys, who wrote love letters behind tractors, beating up pregnant women who we suspect of petty theft, throwing people with children off trains and buses because they had no ticket, gouging out eyes of stray dogs and painting them with burning coal tar…..ah, then we are unstoppable! And how do we treat men who come and make mincemeat of us and our families, who machine gun us to the ground, who send us for months to hospitals, who orphan our kids and leave us with missing limbs?

We do nothing!
We debate!
We wait!
We make each other laughing stocks!
We appall the world with our moral, physical, ethical weaknesses!

Rabindranath Tagore had written a powerful poem which we had to memorise in school…

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken in fragments by narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depths of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake!”

Where is that India ? Did it exist only in the minds of the patriots? Was it only a figment of their imagination?

I too have a prayer…

May the sleeping Indian awaken, Lord! And during his slumber, do not abandon him, O Lord!