16th august 2011, after celebrating our 65th independence anniversary and a three day holiday, I was in no mood to go to college on Tuesday morning. Spick and span as I came out of my room, I got a full 5 min lecture on early to bed and early to rise, even after getting up at 6:00 am in the morning. Had getting up early made someone rich then the milkman should have been a millionaire.The newspaper boy was late and my father was restless for his morning call had been delayed yet again. “Somebody should teach these Indians the accent of time management. “ By the time he realised that it was a national holiday yesterday and that his time management lecture to the newspaper boy would have to wait another 24hrs, I was done with my morning chores and was ready to ride off on my 90cc.
Bhopal has always been a city where people aced in breaching the law even if it was a mere traffic rule which meant no harm to follow.
“Where is your helmet? Park your vehicle this side and show me your license.”
Out came a Rs 500 note travelling a distance of a few inches from the blue denim pocket to the Khaki Uniform. “You may go”, insinuated constable Mahesh Sharma. “And be careful next time. You are the future of our country.” Too right you were Sharmaji. He is the past present and the abominable future of Incredible India which was worth a Rs 500 bill.
Waiting for my friend on that wretched Underbridge as it was drizzling after the heavy rain a few hours back, I had the usual sight of hawkers pulling out the drowning vehicles from the puddle. Oh no, it is never free of cost. Had it been so, why would they have endeavoured to block the drain pipe near the bridge thus ceasing the exhibit? This was not something conspicuous for me in my three years of college life when I had to nearly fight with TVS service station to get a proper servicing for my oil oozing Scooty which used to worsen every next servicing only to get the thing done by a mechanic near the University gate who was able to provide ‘customer satisfaction’ in less than an hour.
There were 20 more girls in the class and some of the boys were sitting outside.“I hope you guys know what Anna Hazare is doing for our country. We are supporting his efforts against corruption. I request you to join us outside the University gate for the protest”, the guy in black kurta advertised in our class.
“Whoopee!! No class today.”
The boys got away with the class and so did another 8 hours from our education. I was surfing my Facebook account which was filled with status updates from almost every single active person on my friend-list, supporting Anna Hazare or protesting against corruption. Notifications and page request from all the more communities of Annaji flooded the count from the average 3 or 4 to 65 that day. Out of the blue, somewhere in the middle of those updates were two most absurd, one by Premanshu about the facts and figures of Bengali NRIs and their richness to which they were proud of and the other by Prajapati about the NO BAR, NO POWER CUT and 100% women education policy of the Gujarati Samaj. I never understood why Indians were so keen in associating themselves with small groups derived of their genes.
As I studied all my notification the list for PSU’s shortlisted candidates was out and I knew my name was not in that list as I happened to be in the unreserved half of the society in addition to not being in the top 10. Not 1% was I deplorable for the alluded quota. I had backups being the progeny of a businessman who had no problem monetizing my GRE scores. Yes, that is the most favourable solution someone of my background adopts and for the time being it was. But should this scenario continue with the technocratic brain drain and the declining masses of educationalist who find more acknowledgements abroad, I hope the demolishing image of Indian education system doesn't recognize us as illiterate, viruses of corruption. The so called favourable solution would then turn into a bane should we abhor to educate our own people to lead a white collared life under white man’s burden. The dream of utopia will be lost in history as a recapitulated yet thwarted attempt.
Please, could you elaborate: what is the single most factor that should unite the whole of India?
ReplyDeleteActually it's quite difficult to claim what exactly serves as the Achilles' heel of India between illiteracy and red-tapism,but I feel educating the masses will serve the purpose to some extent. And by education I mean giving moral education which lacks in even the so called elite class of our country.
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