As I walked down the drenched roadside, I wondered what was new! It was the usual boredom of the rainy season that had pulled me put of the lethargic torpor I was having in the noon. The afternoon had bored me to death, and with a deep hatred for the raindrops gathering on my windowsill, I had slept like a log for two hours. Eventually, the rain had stopped, and seeing the possibility of a stroll, I had ventured outside.
The rain had strangely stopped; with it paving the way for a sullen and melancholic atmosphere. This was precisely, the reason that I had ventured out, and yet I was confronted with the same peculiar hatred of the monsoons. The landscaping had no doubt taken an aesthetically sharper and greener shade, but that too failed to appease me of my state. The trees and their birds were somewhat rejuvenated, but there they were, mocking me with the pleasure the rains had brought to them!
A large pack of street dogs, was whining away to their hearts’ content. Hidden behind a nearby parked car was the source of the whole mischief. There was a petty little cloth package of some sort lying in the overflowing trash can, that the dogs has made it their lives’ purpose to snatch away from each other. There were some weaklings who were being overpowered by the stronger ones, yet they were silently growling.
Ignoring the dogs, I continued on my way to some crowd-bustled area. All I wanted was to see and observe people and their reactions to this sombre weather. As I strolled around the railway station area, a large scale hubbub caught me. Startled, I briskly covered a few steps in order to get a better view of what actually was going on! A group of people were shouting at the top of their voices, cursing each other, calling names, and what not! Apparently the subject matter of their fight was a young peddler who had inadvertently brushed across the rear fender of a car. The damage was not at all much, but of course, standing and arguing right in the middle of the road and blocking the way is after all, the unwritten moral right of every Indian out there!
The problem with our crowd is that everyone nurtures a deep hatred for something or the other. May it be the ‘system’, bad roads, congested public transport and what not! And then somebody starts beating or abusing another guy, and Lo! These hatred nurturing individuals come out in support of either of the two ideologies present and wash their own hands in the flowing water. (This phenomenon is incidentally called – “Behti Ganga mein haath dho lena.” How subtly put!)
My mind raced off to the recent incidents that had taken place in the past few days to which I was a witness to. May it be the question of – who will sit on the newly vacated seat in the train, or should men sitting in the bus, on seats reserved for senior citizens, should be asked to get up, or even the notorious rule breaker of the one-way street! Anything that causes trouble is a welcome break for us, from the usual humdrum of life. Just look at what crowd support such incidents garner? People without even a remote semblance to the act will gather around to witness the event. And mind you, this crowd is mostly the sole reason for the success of any such fight.
As I left the scene near the railway station, I remembered about a cheat which we used to type away in one of the very famed PC games (GTA Vice city people will remember). The cheat went as ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ and it caused the characters in the game city to start random fights right there on the roads. Bemusedly, I smiled. My brain had voluntarily started keeping a record of the number of such public fight incidents in the past few weeks, and it had already reached ten plus.
We Indians are awesome people, we like excitement in our lives. We go with ‘Aaj kuchh toofani karte hain…..’ tag and grab the best available opportunity. As it is we fight all along! People fight on the road, our ‘law-makers’ fight in the parliament, and we all fight against corruption. (At least we say so….). We fight amongst creeds, genders, territories, languages and what not! And at the end of the day, what we finally achieve out such futile fights and arguments and quarrels is the million dollar question!
Retracing my steps back home, I noticed the petty little package still lying there untouched, in the heap of garbage by the overflowing trash can. A weak dog was panting and puffing and a few feet away a few stronger ones moving on to conquer another territory. The subject matter was still there. The only thing that had changed was that somebody had won and another had lost. Two (and man more) had wasted their time and nothing was gained.
However, I couldn’t help but smiling. Unthought-of, in pursuit of freedom from sheer boredom, I had managed to get a story for my blog post. And pondering over the title to it, I could just think of using the PC Game cheat again after all these years, and I simply wrote – Fight! Fight! Fight!
The Rivulet of Thoughts 