Category: Women & Society

When I think about India, the first statement that strikes my cognitive memory is – ” India is a land of rich and diverse cultural  heritage”. Well I do not dismiss my conscience for sounding that loud and clear to me. It indeed is and I have grown up seeing and believing in this in so many ways. My country is densely populated with warm people whose gestures can make you have outnumbered friends in just no time. When it is time for a festival, you can clearly see a crowd like a color wheel spinning on the streets expressing their exuberance and enthusiasm almost every 12 months in a calendar year. The food here is awesome. You name it and you get it. With each state that surprises you with its exquisite cuisine, it is quite a daunting task to resist your lips from smacking all those 366 days, not forgetting to credit the leap years  . But amongst everything, if I could wish for a little more, other than sociological & political improvements moving smoothly through all the diverse cultures and in an even hugely diverse nation, is some civic sense. It is beyond my simple understanding and thought process as to why in India, do we fail in acknowledging some of the simplest of the civic senses. In spite of numerous drives that have been initiated from time to time either by the government or any NGO, thanks to our undying spirit, we rarely let any of them succeed. If you are on the streets, you can observe the immense knack to honk till your ear drums blow off  even when the traffic signal is red. There is regular breeze of traffic with a feeling of outnumbered Tumblers swooshing through the Gotham City where people are always in a rush yet being on time seems like a distant dream. Random walls and the streets are like a graffiti of pattern spitting as if the world for these talented spitters are an inherited basin. So if you really need a permanent solution, paste a poster of a mythological figure and with the fear of respect, the traumatized walls can savor a rescue. A large bunch of us also have an innate talent of generously throwing off unwanted things in our hands to the mercy of the streets believing that the government already employs staff to broom them and we should keep up with this employment strategy. Even a cue is a clueless subject. To begin with, the concept of a cue is rarely welcomed and even if maintained, there are more energies expelled in breaking it than otherwise. For the rapidly growing economy and sky rising buildings, roads, bridges or dams there always would be a signature of the pile of the unattended left over bricks and mortar that symbolise a development and a laze, so much simultaneously that probably there is never the urge or time to have them removed untill blessed with a responsible eye.

Seriously, I and many more like minded ‘me’ wonder as to what goes into our making that we make lives for us and others so miserable? And the tragic part is it’s not only about residents hovering around the poverty or the education denied that are being involved in the circus but surprisingly even the educated bunch who might be holding the trophies of self misconception in the name of an absent civic sense.

I deeply wish if we had a vaccination called ‘civic sense’, life would and could have been such a bliss, in my land. Well, the fact also remains that when the same people walk down the streets of another country, they would do any possible  gesture to exhibit that like any other sensible citizen, they are well capable of abiding laws, regulations and courteous civic sense which is somehow forgotten on their on motherland. My country is an immensly beautiful place with natural and historic treasures along with diversity in the truest senses just that the most needed vaccination of civic dose could have made it so much better.