excuse me, can you smell uranus

i was driving back late one night in my dad's rickety old esteem. had been lazing around at a friend's place. the usual guy stuff, smoke a couple of cigarettes, watched some psycho shit on the tele, had a couple of beers and talked about life. like old times. yeah, so i'm on the road and the systems blaring cold hard bitch by jet and i'm singing along like a crazy person.

the road's really dark. its late at night and the street light's not working. but just ahead i see this lone figure cycling. a tired man on his way home. a little bit of guilt creeps in a i turn the stereo down a bit. a little closer and the man riding the cycle is a police constable. and then it hits me. the guilt that is.

there's me, unemployed at the time, with a UK degree under my belt. i'd slept the whole day, played with the dog, read the glass palace which might i add is the most boring book ive read, and then there's this man who has worked the whole day and now to get home has to pedal his way home in the middle of the night. what's wrong with this moment?

dont get me wrong. i know my dad's worked hard to get to where he is and to provide us with a comfortable life. he pays his the unfair taxes that our so called democratic government levies on its salaried people. and the injustice of it all, that has been burning a storm in my head since i got back suddenly seemed to explode.

the disparity in classes is so prevalent that we become immune to it. like doctors get immune to seeing carved up dead bodies. the beggars, the destitue, the sick and the dying, the coolies, the servants, the manual labourers, the maimed and the hungry. its all around. and yet, more tt\han fifty yeas since we got our much longed for 'independance', has that much really changed.

true we have bright shiny new buildings and sleek cars. india's become THE place to be. with yoga and neo spiritualism being uber cool. but drive around our 'shining' metros at night and you'll see hundreds of people sleeping on the streets with not even that patch of pavement to call their own. why? i'll tell you why. inneffectual governments, criminals for business men, criminals for politicians, and a middle class that does not have a voice in their own country.

but the root of the problem is more base than that. its the same lousy thing that has driven men to conquest and adventure. the same thing that drove men to enslave other human life and to its the same thing that drives man to become a lower form of life. MONEY. five letters of filth.

what has that left us with. a greater divide between the rich and poor, more disquiet and class hatred, a people divided by the rupee, or atleast the quantity of rupees. on another side, we have ineffectual, unscrupulous doctors, horrible teachers, hapless engineers and useless architects. and we wonder why the white man, with all his faults, is still ahead of us.

back to the cop. we've all bitch about corrupt cops. but considering the pittance they are paid its no wonder really. they work on the street, with hardly any reward or recognition. we loathe our policemen rather than respect them. but people who work in government offices get paid much more. they hardly do any work. their offices are haphazard with files piled up on any flat surface and some non flat nes giving the room the look of a godown. the people work lazily while the comman man, whom they are supposed to serve, stands head lowered as if in respect to get his work done.

i was in a government office this week and there was actually a crow flying around the office cawing its disapproval of the lack of landing surfaces. and by the way, if you have a serious allergy to dust, walking into a government office is tantamount to committing suicide!!!