Ravings of a Nomadic Mind

I had to travel in an emergency and couldn’t find flight tickets, any way my city airport was shut down so it was going to be a round about trip for me any way, so here I was sitting at Bangalore railway station with a ticket that said 21 in the waiting list and no chance of getting my ticket confirmed so I was hunting for a TT who could help get me get a seat, so as I was looking for him I met other two guys with the same travails and we three set forward with our common goals. When we found the man I question he told us there was no chance we could find seats before the train left and so we were to board the last most compartment and try our luck any way, the guy with me told the TT that he was willing to pay for the ticket as he was not feeling well, but the TT just shook him off and said there wasn’t a chance that we could get what we wanted, later as we were sitting on the luggage the very same guy confessed to me that he felt bad trying to bribe the TT but it was the way of things and that we had to do it. I was taken aback, yes, bribery is a way of life and yes people do it blatantly in our country, but remorse at a later point for me was new. I questioned him, and he said it was true that it was a way of life and he had resorted to it more times than he cared to admit.

The point here is a lot of other fellow country men or women question the various practices of the system and lament and bitch about it in their comforts of their rooms, all these armchair warriors wouldn’t think twice before bribing a government official or taking bribes themselves when some one offered it. Again true a lot of these very people wouldn’t mind bribing others but would hesitate to take one, not because they were clear but because they were unwilling to bear the consequences if they were caught, as some one once said “Locks were invented to keep the honest, honest, the dishonest will always find a way”. I don’t know what I would have done or which category I fall in because I have never been offered a bribe or asked for one, but I would never willingly offer to bribe some one, but I will be the first to admit that no matter what my attitude it would hardly make a dent in the system, we need to build a value and ethics system that doesn’t exist, we bring up Indian culture and values to defend, against modernization, against every change basically, we even use it to defend rapist saying that the women brought it upon them selves by wearing western clothes, so what I want to know is where does bribery fall in with Indian cultural values. Times Of India Started a Lead India Campaign the Crux of the campaign was to “DO” it lead with the statement that we were all armchair warriors and would give one Indian the chance to get off that armchair and do some thing about it. Do we need such a campaign for over a billion of us to do some thing or can’t we just get up off on our own and say “no, I will not do that”. I won’t take bribe no matter how much it hurt me and I won’t give a bribe even if it means that I have to travel for 48 hours sitting in the gallery. I know I can and I did.

The train arrived in Pune and a lot of people got off and a few got on the TT came around and told me there was a seat available and I could have it if I wanted as I was the next in line, I was going to answer in the affirmative, when he pointed to a couple of girls who were lower down the order and said or if I didn’t need or could manage then he would give the same seat to the two girls, so I bowed out and let them have the seat, the guy I was sitting with said that Women have it easy and they get everything for them done very easily. This is another aspect of gender bias that we never really tackle I mean, ok women get stuff more easily than men, I might have given them my seat even if the TT had allotted it to me, so what we tend to see the benefits there gender gets them and not the harassment, women are not give equal pay, most women are forced to give up careers and education to be home makers and be totally dependent on some one else for every Rupee they spend. They get picked on by every street side Romeo and still they persevere and go on with their lives, well it pissed me off, go get a sex change operation if you feel so left out.

Oh I Hate eating on trains especially if I am traveling alone, I mean I hate when I am eating and the people try to peek at what you are eating, children gawk at stuff that their parents would prohibit them from, so I generally offer to share what ever I am having with the others around me, but these days with so many incidences of conmen duping people by first drugging them, people look at you as if you are one of those conmen. When we were young we used to travel a lot on trains in summers going to Kerala or other holidays and we had other people traveling with us, the children would share toys they brought and families would share food and three days or more would just disappear like that, the journey was actually looked forward to, now its just a bunch of suspicious people traveling together because they have no choice. Its sad really.