Monkey business
The Mumbai rain pelted down on the Mumbai streets as I the
rickshaw that seated me wobbled awkwardly along the poorly paved roads,
promising to stay unperturbed yet dangerously close to adopting the attitude of
every lying Indian politician.
However, what disturbed me greatly was not the unstable
state of the rickshaw or the government, but the state of the minds that form
our society today; for as I stared out of the meter long gap in the rickshaw’s
aluminum body – both its door and its window – I saw a man step out of his Audi
A8 – the daunting structure that seconds ago came dangerously close to running
over a beggar as he walked across the road, presumably in a state of delirious
hunger – and spit on that same man whose life he had consumed in an attempt to
cope with the rat race of the metropolitan mind.
The poor man didn’t say a word – how could he? The ‘Audi
monster’s’ money gave him this power; this unstated right over those of a lower
economic status. And the sad part is, about 99% of the world today lives within
the confined walls of that mentality.
But what if we could be like the monkey and the dog? What if
the rich man and the beggar could sit together arm in arm and just talk? What
if sworn enemies could could sit, arm in arm, and just talk? What if Mr. Putin
and Barrack Obama could sit on the front porch of a small wooden house, bask in
nature’s serenity and discuss Syria
without the animosity that currently characterizes their very existence?
They say that the future is in the hands of the youth and I
agree. Maybe if the youth of today could get rid of the iPhone that has become
synonymous with his hand, and free it to hold another human being – like the
monkey and the dog – in a visibly wildly intellectual conversation, maybe we
would live in a better world today.
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