Is Corruption our biggest worry?

                I had kept away from the whole Annaesque turn that our lives had taken by refraining myself from reading the newspaper and watching news channels.  And it didn’t seem to stop there. I was witness to thousands of people holding candles and parading central park (in Bangalore). Men on bikes were shouting slogans and waving flags at the surge of this newly found patriotism. I rather forego all this till the next time I watch Rang De Basanti. The blog was a last resort when I started receiving text messages and email petitions to support our savior against corruption. I hate to sound harsh, unpatriotic and boring but have we toed the line this time around?

                Moving away from this, I remember an incident from a couple of years back. My friend and I were having a beer and discussing work. We happened to notice the blonde guy at the next table because he spoke in Hindi with the waiter. He was paying off the bill and remarked, “Indians generally tip about 10 Rs, right?” We were only 1 beer down (Fosters wouldn’t surely raise our patriotic voices against this gora). We smiled and nodded our heads. “Yes, Yes you are absolutely right.” He had heard part of our conversation and assumed that we worked for some American company that sells credit-cards or housing loans, apparently from our accents. We didn’t take the trouble of explaining that we worked with recruitments. My buddy wanted to smoke, so we stepped out. We met up with the guy and started talking. Kevin was from Australia (Ozzie for Beer) and called himself Ghanashyam. His parents had taken to ISKON when he was young and they quite rigorously followed it. They had given up meat, re-christened themselves with Indian names, sang bhajans on Krishna and made frequent trips to Haridwar and Varanasi. We were curious, how on earth did they get into it in the first place?

                His answer surprised us. In the 90’s, some of them started getting bored with life. They wanted to do something different, and the whole idea of Hinduism seemed entertaining. Wearing a saree, smearing your body with sandalwood paste and going bonkers.

                Is this sudden form of patriotism a similar distraction? A path that deviates from the boring lives that we lead? Anna Hazare is a true Gandhian, he shuns alcohol and tobacco products, doesn’t watch movies from multiplexes and surely doesn’t go pub-hopping. What are the ideals of the youth who follow him? Let’s not consider him the Jimi Hendricks of our time attracting an audience at a concert.

                Over the past 1 year, I had interacted with a certain contact at the client side. The guy had a reputation of taking gifts (as they call it) in cash and kind from most of the client-partners. It seemed highly hypocritical when he sent out a mail asking us to support Anna Hazare. We need to look hard and recognize the person on the other side of the mirror before demarcating the men and women who rule the country. When a woman gets raped in an alley or someone gets run over in the middle of the road, our busy lives don’t allow us to stop and help them out. Can we donate blood without thinking about the recipient, whether he’s black, white, religious, Catholic, Ezhava or Suni? When the country faced threats of communal riots following the Ayodhya debacle, why didn’t the public stand up and say that we are united? We all hid in the comforts of our houses expecting the law enforcers to keep everything under control. We drink and drive, and when caught pay off the cop to avoid being arrested. We break the rules and now support someone in creating rules that presumably will clean up the country. We use private hospitals, educate our children in the private schools, refrain from paying taxes and complain about the way the country is run. When we are gifted television sets and food processors to vote for these leaders, we happily oblige.

If you want to take the fight ahead, go ahead and provide shelter to the homeless, educate the uneducated and provide charity to the deserved. Wearing black dresses and white hats and updating our status messages on social networks won’t change the world. Let’s take a stand against foeticide, atrocities against women and prostitution of 14-year olds. Would the Lokpal bill allow our women folk to walk in the streets without fear? The answer to the question should hopefully provide direction to our revolutions. On the other hand, if we feel that the bill against corruption would kick off the other rebellions, why do we need to wear a shirt that says, “I am Anna?” Why not, “Fight against Corruption?” Is this Anna’s fight or ours?

64 years of freedom has revealed more darkness than light. When we don the tricolor paint on our face and call ourselves patriotic, it doesn’t segregate us from the clowns in a circus. You can fool some people for some time, but you can’t fool yourself every time. Just an afterthought, once this is done and dusted, where are we headed? What's trending on twitter?