The height of irrelevance

It has been a big change living away from Bengalooru for the past few months.I am missing the place, which I am proud to call my own.

The events last week in Namma Bengalooru left a bad taste in my mouth, and was tongue tied out here unable to defend my city and country.

Let us look at the reason why this happened. A former dictator in a faraway land was executed (and there were no protests there) and there were protests three weeks later (I will not be surprised if this had happened three years later) in Bangalore, burning the effigies of people who hardly matter to us or our everyday life and all of a sudden indulged in violence, bringing the city to a stand-still. Then came the reaction to that and another round of violence. Unfortunately, Newton's third law held good here, which was not good for us :-(..

My first reaction was shock. What nonsense is happening in a place like Bengalooru?? There are a lot of problems faced by our country, namely Terrorism by those not-so-friendly cowards (a.k.a terrorists) everywhere, poverty, lack of development & infrastructure, rise in crime and many more.. There are no protests against these problems.. but why the hell do we need to have a violent protest for some dead guy in a really far off land.. It beats me.. There are many peaceful ways to protest.. Wear a black badge or have a candle light march ... Why do you want to disrupt common people's peace of mind and damage public property which belongs to us, the citizens? This holds good for those people who retaliated. An eye for an eye is not a solution to any problem..

What did the people who protested and indulged in violence achieve by this? An ex-MP, who was almost lost in the oblivion, is back in the news. Is this the price to be in the news?? Damage of public property,injuries to people, loss of life and most importantly a dent in Bengalooru's reputation.

Let us not forget that Bengalooru is being watched worldwide and this kind of negative publicity is what we can do without. Let me add another thing. The newspapers in the place I stay , just need a minute reason to damage India's reputation.. Incidents like this is what they are looking forward to.

To compund this, I noticed the protests and burning of cricketers' effigies which were happening due to the non performance of our cricket team. If people are 0.1 % as passionate about the performance of their respective governing bodies like municipalities, corporations, governments, all these bodies will be on tenterhooks and will perform well and most of our problems will be solved..

This shows the amount of time we are wasting on irrelevant issues and lack of attention to important issues...

BTW, I have a suggestion for those politicians and political party members who still want to protest against that particular execution.. We the citizens can start a fund , so that we can sponsor the tickets and visas of these politicos to that country to protest. This cost would be much cheaper than the cost of violence and loss of peace of mind out here. In addition, we have the chance that these people may not make it back, which will help us and our country in the long run.

The only solution is to ask the so-called champions of justice to "TAKE A HIKE" and let us concentrate on issues which are relevant to our country and our lives..

The Rain - A short story

Disclaimer : The characters and events in this story are fictious . Any resemblance to those living or dead is a pure coincidence.

As I sit next to the window, I see beautiful droplets of water on the leaves, moist sky and green grass. The rain makes everything look beautiful.. As I saw the rain get heavier, my memory jogged back to a time not so long ago....

I was a happy-go-lucky guy, with no care about the world, living everyday as it was the last. All I wanted to was enjoy life to the fullest. It was just another day or it seemed so in the morning on the way to office... and then it started raining in the evening. All I felt was that it was just another rainy day,with flooded streets and serpentine traffic jams and it would be a very long drive back home..

I started driving back home and as feared got stuck in a traffic jam.. But, was it worth getting stuck in a traffic jam? .. this was worth it.. I saw a dark shadow jumping on the puddles on the footpath and enjoying the rain.. as the shadow neared me.. I could see the face more clearly.. I started feeling better.. and it seemed like an angel had descended on this wet world.. and I yearned to see the angel better.. and as she came close to my car.. i could see her round blue eyes ,flowing hair, the dimple in her cheeks and the beautiful smile.. and I was in a different world.. and there came the rude awakening.. a shrill horn!!!

The traffic started moving .. and she had disappeared... Looks like my luck had deserted me as usual.. I never had any luck in my life.. I started moving again .. but this time around, I enjoyed the rain and the thought of that angel.. Who was she? Will I ever see her again??

To this day, I hope that I can catch a glimpse of her again in my life and my hope increases every time it rains.. Who is she?? She is my angel, my beautiful angel...

Author's footnote : We see a lot of people day in and day out. There are some unknown people whom we remember for some good reasons and yearn to meet. This is such a story where the protogoanist may or may not meet that girl again...