Building Civilised Place

‘I am watching you for quite some time’ said Lulu, the parrot, from his cage. ‘You look so irritated and hassled.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said. ‘I went out today only to be caught in a ‘Rasta-Roko’ [Traffic Blocked] on the highway. It was organised by a political party wanting the ruling party Congress to give up control. They simply do not care about the inconvenience to which a common man is put to.’
‘You have high expectations of civilised behaviour from our leaders. Unreasonable expectation, I would say’ Lulu remarked. ‘Did you not see the big birthday hoardings everywhere in the city? One gets sick of this sycophancy, the Municipality declared that they were going to remove the hoardings but have done nothing.’
‘And did you see the new hoardings that are announcing ‘dahi-handi’ [human pyramid that breaks an earthen pot hung high as a festival ceremony] prize of Rs. 25 lakhs [ Rs. 2.5 Mn]? Such commercialisation of simple enjoyable festivals and its constant telecast on TV also makes me sad.’
‘I agree with you. These Dahi-handi pyramids stall the traffic for you. You cannot fly over it like
we parrots!’ Lulu said.
‘Recently at the Varsha [Monsoon] Marathon the number of organisers who were on the stage perhaps outnumbered the participants. The Commissioners and
Corporators, their Chelas [followers], Chamchas [sycophants] and Cronies [as Anil Ambani puts it] are making living peacefully in a city very difficult’ I complained.
‘Add to this the blaring loud speakers used in blatant violation of rules by these political leaders. One just wants to run away from the place’ I added.

‘Perhaps you should migrate to some other country’ Lulu proposed. ‘But even there moving freely on the road is dangerous.’
‘I agree, many countries are unsafe. Perhaps we score over them in Mumbai. But then what about Singapore? I moved there at midnight and everyone told me that it was absolutely safe, it was indeed!’ I considered some options.

‘Interesting!’ Lulu observed, ‘You human beings pushed animals out by occupying their land, and now some animal-like among you are pushing you out.’

Vivek


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