Few months back, I was in a Taxi rushing to Airport and it broke down on its way. Though I was a bit anxious, Taxi driver moved out and restarted the vehicle in minutes. He came back and as we started moving ahead, he quipped with a grin “Jugaad se to hamara desh chal sakta hai sahab, ye to sirf gaadi hai!!” (By improvisation/work around, we can make our country run, this is only a car!) The words were simple, yet they left me thinking what this improvisation really means in our daily lives… I was not getting my answer…
Few days back, a friend of mine got a driving license after a lot of efforts to drive in one of the middle east country with a left hand drive. With a sigh of relief he confessed “ Though it is very difficult to get a license here, but driving here definitely makes us better drivers, do lane driving & being more systematic. It actually makes us Indians learn how to follow the rules & stay in the Queue”!! I finally had my answer to the Jugaad in our lives….
The message was short & crisp. If one analyses the concept of lane driving in our daily life, we will realize that we have become so habitual of breaking the rules, having that work around for any task; that it has reached a stage of giving us that satisfaction & a sense of pride! Be it the crime against women, or the inherent corruption in the system, be it the road side accidents or something as simple as standing in the queue for buying movie tickets, if one witness everything around; it would be clearly evident that the bottom line of every problem happens to be our habit of being Out of the queue. We want our erring neighboring countries to maintain treaties, we expect our Government to fulfill every election promise, we expect them to enact the laws with NO deviance to the way they are framed, we expect our company to be honest following the rule book to the hilt in favor of employees. But when it comes to us as individuals??? Well “I” have all the right to bypass the entire lane as the rules & queue are meant to be followed by everyone except me!! We want all the rights under the sun with an umbrella which shields us from all the responsibilities.
Today when we go through the news channels and news reports of our country, there is so much negative energy that it sometimes gets difficult to figure out if Media is creating this negativity or is it the negative lives of people which is getting reflected in the frames of media. But in either of the cases, the fact remains that if it is “WE” who are at receiving end of this apathy, it is only “WE” who need to be blamed for initiating this fire which seems to engulf one and all.
Thus “I” will continue to break the queues wherever possible: For buying the milk or movie tickets, for crossing the traffic signal or getting my kid enrolled in a school…. Its my habit of being out of the lane, the exemplary birth right of standing out of the Queue…
Lets get it right fellow Indians, the candle lights at India gate, ridiculing politicians on Facebook & Twitter, slamming virtually everyone from celebrity to Babus to our college principal is not going to change our nation for good. If there is going to be a start, it is going to be with “I, Me & Myself”… Let me sleep tonight with the promise of waking tomorrow in the queue of a Billion plus. Maybe our tomorrow would be better than today. Lets get in a queue… Happy Independence Day, Jai Hind :)
