Amitabh Bachchan v/s Jim Morrison

I grew up watching Bollywood with a huge influence of Mr Amitabh B. The test of memory as a kid was how many dialogues I could remember of AB Sr. One dialogue that had a huge impact on me and my generation was ‘Mard ko dard nahi hota’. Whenever I got hurt and use to whine in pain I always doubted my own manliness because of this super dialogue from my superstar. I felt obligated towards this landmark dialogue. The heroes of my earlier years were all strong, matured, right, ethical, super understanding, sacrificing etc. The hero would take care of their parents, protect the sister, won’t cheat on the heroine, eliminate the anti-socials, give justice to the poor, robin hood types and the list goes on. There wasn’t anything wrong in them. Eventually with a trend of women-oriented movies coming up even the heroines started displaying strength, maturity and a sense of righteousness through their characters. Everything seemed to be so ideal where the heroes and heroines just didn’t have any shortcomings. The landmark dialogue then became applicable to the female fraternity as well. A hero would bear 6 bullets and still keep fighting whereas the villain would breathe last even with one bullet. All because our heroes were meant to be strong.

I was actually growing up with these folks who were apparently ideals, too much of pressure matching up to them. We were all growing getting trained to be right, perfect and strong.

While we were departing from college we had sessions on the tricks to crack job interviews. One of the usual questions asked during interviews of those days was to give out 3 strengths and 3 weaknesses. The trainer told us that while your strengths should always be outstanding, even the weaknesses that you share should be camouflaged strengths. In short even the weaknesses that we mention should indirectly sound like strengths. It was all about strengths, ethics and giving all right answers. That clearly meant that for getting a good job, I needed to have lot of strengths, even my weaknesses had to sound like strengths, everything had to be right with lot of maturity.

The same era had one more unconventional guy named Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors. A singer, songwriter, poet, the lizard king. He led a controversial life and had a mysterious death at the age of 27. Had he been alive today, he would have been almost the same age of Mr. Bachchan.

One of his famous quotes said “People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.” It was a good read of those days but somehow Jim would come across as a loser in front of the iconic Mr. Bachchan. As a youth even I resorted to AB Sr. as been strong seemed to more lucrative.

It took me almost a decade to understand what Jim was trying to say through his quotes and now after getting exhausted living Mr Bachchan I feel Jim Morrison made lot of sense.

We always want to project to others, a side which is right, perfect, strong, kind, and ethical. In case we are passing through a rough patch, instead of dealing with it we prefer distracting ourselves or disconnecting ourselves from all.

I was reading a blog on how a woman did a personal makeover, went on a world tour, joined the gym, started partying hard and indulged in retail therapies just to deal with her depression. The comments on that blog were all praises on how the woman had bounced back strongly from her depression.  A thought to ponder, was she really dealing with her reason for depression or was just distracting herself. While we think that we have bounced back the fact remains that we just keep distracting ourselves.

We keep treating the symptoms and conveniently ignore addressing the root cause because Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota. We keep distracting ourselves, we keep running away from our predicaments eventually resulting in things getting more compounded and complicated leading to people taking unwanted and undesired steps in life. The little demons turn into dangerous monsters. And all this because we don’t want to accept that there is something going wrong.

People enjoy self-pride in been strong, right, kind and ethical without realising that the actual strength lies in understanding, accepting and dealing with our short-comings and bad situations.

 One of my favourite villains Joker (batman villain) says “Give a man a mask and he will show you his true face”. It actually makes lot of sense as we all are bogged down by too much social obligations resulting in us losing our genuineness. It’s ok to have a bad phase in life, its ok not to have a happening life, its ok to have had a bad relation, its ok to have lost some reputation, its ok to be unsuccessful, its ok to be selfish, wrong, unethical at times. People who love you would anyways love you; rather the advantage here is you may get rid of all the hypocrites from your life.  As someone rightly said that “just one hole in my pocket and I ended up losing more relations than coins”.

As we start the New Year, may we all experience freedom from self-imposed compulsion of been right and strong always.

Happy New Year to all.

Children's Day Special

Children’s Day Special

This day takes me back to my days as a kid where we used to get chocolates in school and someone would dress up like Chacha Nehru and give a speech. It was told to us that Baal Diwas was celebrated especially on 14^th November as it was Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru’s birthday. This was an official day for we as kids. We looked forward to this day every year.

As we grew and reached beyond Std 8 we felt that Children’s Day was a very childish affair as we had already become seniors of the secondary section. When we reached college we were all busy celebrating other critical days to prove our adulthood such as Rose Day, Chocolate Day, Friendship Day and not to forget Valentine’s Day (although NA to all). Hence we eventually forgot Children’s Day.

Now that I am a father of a kid again this day has started enthusing me a lot. With every passing year I can see some changes on Children’s Day. There was an event in my office and even when I visited a local mall there was a celebration happening. What I observed was the parents were behaving more like kids and the kids on the other hand had seemingly already become adults. The parents were indulging in games and the kids were busy clicking pics of their parents. Then I realised what was so different this year. The difference was this year I saw much more kids with smart phones in hands. It was disheartening to see kids been more interested in wats app and clicking selfies with some fancy backgrounds rather than been interested in the games that were played.

When I was a kid, the various ways our parents flaunted us was by making us sing, dance, do mimicry or to play a musical instrument. The moment the kid performs well in front of other you would see proud smiles on the parent’s faces. Nowadays parent flaunt their kid’s technological skills. I hear parents talking about how expert their kids are in using cell phones, ipads, laptops etc. They take pride in saying that their kids know the smart phone features better than they know themselves. Wow, are you saying your kid is doing few things on a smart phone which even you don’t understand and are you seriously feeling proud about it. Isn’t it a threat?

Kids are behaving 2 – 4 years ahead of their actual age, all thanks to the huge exposure they are getting through smart phones and other devices. Just because parents have money doesn’t mean they provide kids with gadgets and devices they are not yet ready to use. With the You Tubes and Wats apps of the world we ensure our kids have lot of knowledge and exposure. Let’s not miss out that knowledge and exposure would only enable the kids to get started with few new things but the wisdom of which thing to continue and which one to stop would only come with age and experience. One of the classic examples of recent times was the Blue Whale game where the kids had the knowledge of starting it, but didn’t have the wisdom of stopping it after one point and the result were fatal casualties. A real example of how we expose kids to technology even before they are ready for it. While few parents would always claim that they are vigilant while introducing technology to their kids but the fact remains that, what our kids are doing in front of us today, the same things they may want to do while they are alone and no parents can keep a watch on their kids 24 X 7.  

As heard in one of the TED Talks, in 2010, Steve Jobs when he was releasing the IPad, described the IPad as a device that was “extraordinary”. He claimed that it was the best browsing experience, way better than a laptop or a smart phone. A couple of months later he was approached by a journalist from the New York Times, at the end of the interview the interviewer asked Steve Jobs that ‘Your kids must be loving the IPad?’ and Steve simply answered that ‘They haven’t used it yet, we limit how much technology our kids use at home”. Indeed a staggering response by someone who headed Apple.

In fact there is a school quite near the Silicon Valley called the Waldorf School of the Peninsula and they don’t introduce Screens until 8^th grade. Whats really interesting of this school is that 75% of the kids who go there have parents who are high-level Silicon Valley tech executives.

Now if a Steve Jobs doesn’t introduce a IPad to his own kids who were around 12 – 15 yrs in 2010. If the top executives of the Silicon Valley send their kids to a school where screens aren’t introduced to the kids until 8^th grade then are we in a little haste of introducing our kids to technology. The producers of technology (silicon valley) are keeping their own kids away from technology upto a certain age and we who are consumers of technology are rampantly making technology available to our kids.

When I say all this somewhere even I am a defaulting parent here. We have apparently started taking pride when our kids start behaving older than their actual age. Let’s ask ourselves that is it something to be proud about or something to be worried about. Blessed are the parents who have kids that behave their own age because only they are naturally evolving without any external forces. So the next time when we are exposing our kid to anything new, let’s ask ourselves whether they have the wisdom to handle the new thing. Giving our kids knowledge and exposure is important but allowing time for our kids to gain wisdom is utmost important.  

Sorry Shilpa! We Moved On.

Sorry Shilpa, I had to reach home early hence couldn’t wait.

Sorry Shilpa, a friend of mine was waiting at a coffee shop for me hence couldn’t wait.

Sorry Shilpa, I had to complete my Diwali shopping, hence didn’t wait.

Sorry Shilpa, I hate getting tangled into legal processes hence didn’t wait.

Sorry Shilpa, I was too tired and just wanted to go home and crash hence didn’t wait.

And many more Sorry and reasons.

For all those who would be wondering who Shilpa is, she was a 34 year old married woman from Kharghar. On 14^th Oct, while returning from work on her bike, due to uneven road level she lost her balance and came under a crane. She died on the spot. The video of the incident went viral on social media and again the big talk started on the sad state of affair of the roads and how the contractors compromise on work quality. Hell broke loose on the police and local authority as they started searching for the crane operator and the contractor who was getting the work done.

When I was watching the video, the disturbing part wasn’t the state of roads neither the crane operator, the saddest part were the passer-by. The so-called citizens of our country were just looking at a lady fallen and the so-called responsible citizens were just passing by. Dozens of vehicles passed by but no one stopped. People just moved on.

Giving due respect to the local residents who raised their voice against local authorities, what disappointed me the most were the passer-by. How could someone just pass by a person who is lying in a pool of blood? Was there something more important to the passer-by than a person lying unattended on the road side? Were they really scared of getting interrogated by police in case they are standing at the accident spot? Were they feeling that if they try to check on the lady their own clothes may have blood stains, maybe their hand would have blood. Why didn’t anyone run behind the crane operator to catch hold of him? Many more questions keep doing rounds in my mind. It made me feel that God forbid if I would be lying there on the road side injured would anyone even bother to attend me or would just wait for police to come and do their job.

Not that we have grown insensitive toward others but the most recent problem the urban class facing is that we have learned to Move On. We have forgotten the art of putting up a good fight. Under the influence of few strong words such as Understanding, Maturity, Individuality, Tolerance, Foresightedness, Obligations, Logics etc. we choose to move on rather than waiting back to deal with the situation.

14^th Oct 6.20pm was a moment of truth for the dozens of passer-by but they miserably failed because they chose to move on instead of waiting back next to her. Urbanism hasn’t only taught us to move on but also wash off our hands. We are living in an era of hand sanitizers where we don’t only wash off our hands but use sanitizers as well. Even if the situation around us is unclean our endeavour is to ensure our hands are always clean and sanitized.  

We have forgotten the art of making our hands dirty to clean up the situation instead our focus only remains in ensuring that our hands are clean even if the situation around is dirty. We use our intelligence optimally to convince ourselves why it’s important to move on and wash-off our hands instead of waiting back, making hands dirty and dealing with the situation. Guess now, people feel courageous by staying away from situations and avoiding it.

 Sorry Shilpa, we couldn’t attend you when your bike skid and you came under the crane, but you know what, we had a candle march to protest against the bad road condition. We are genuinely feeling bad for your spouse and kids and we assure you that whatever amount of likes, protests and signature campaigns that are needed on social media against this we are all there to support. The police have already arrested the crane operator and recently even the road contractor has got arrested. Apologies for giving you all these updates a bit late, but hope you understand that we had Diwali at our home and there was too much of work to be done and after Diwali we headed for a short family vacation and have just returned.

Sorry Shilpa! We Moved On….

 

Thanksgiving Letter

To,

The Government

 

Sub:       Letter of Thanksgiving

Dear Government,

Thank you for ensuring we have one more event (Elphinstone bridge stampede) to talk about for the next few days. We were bored talking about rains, water logging and potholes. This incident came in as a breath of fresh air. We all were quite busy the entire day viewing pics and videos of how the stampede happened and the icing on the cake was the close-up pics of the 22 dead bodies with numbers written on their forehead. People who had names as their identities, got converted into a numbers within few minutes.

All this while I used to feel that there is no guaranteed tomorrow but thank you for making me realise that there isn’t even a guaranteed today. Thank you for making me realise the importance of a life insurance policy along with accidental coverage and medi-claim as well. Now I am waiting for my insurance company to call me and ask for a top up cover. Thank you for making me realise that I have to do all my work as of yesterday, as I may not have a tomorrow neither I may not have a full of today.

I will now meet my entire family before leaving for work as they may not see me in the evening. We maintain an excel file on the number of investment / debts we have and keep updating it on quarterly basis, but now I promise I will update it on a daily basis. I will stop aspiring for increments and promotions because now I will only aspire to reach office alive and likewise return home alive.

Thank you for giving a meaty topic for the daily evening debates on news channels. Few intellectuals actually got an opportunity to display their prudence because of this event. All thanks to you.

These incidents actually make us forget our own miseries for a while as we realise there are bigger problems prevailing. Thank you for increasing our tolerance level to an unfathomable limit. I actually lacked tolerance but I feel soon I will reach a stage of Nirvana.

One thing you really need to worry about is in the next election you may fall short of 22 votes because they just died, I am sure you will pocket all the other votes. Anyways people will forget the place Elphinstone as you have already rechristened it to Prabhadevi.   

I would like to take this opportunity of thanking you for many more things such as previously I paid numerous taxes but now I pay only one tax (although it’s on the higher side). Now with this ever increasing fuel prices even I ensure my driving quality is better so that I attain optimum fuel efficiency. Now I proudly tell my friends in U.S. and Australia that we are going to have a bullet train running between Ahmedabad and Mumbai. Suggest the next bullet train project should be from Ahmedabad to Delhi. So eventually both Mumbai and Delhi will get concentrated in Ahmedabad.  

Don’t worry about these petty incidences such as the one that happened in Elphinstone. I am sure the previous government is responsible for all this. Let’s focus on our growth trajectory. Bullet train, I am eagerly waiting for you.  And, of course not to forget the efforts and hard work you have put in changing names of most of our railway stations

And a final thanks to all my fellow Mumbaikars who played Garba today in spite of this tragic event. I guess people call it Spirit of Mumbai. I live in a city that never sleeps, people don’t sleep they just accidentally die.

 

Warm Regards

Happy Mumbaikar

Beyond the lens

Beyond the lens

While walking towards the cafeteria for lunch on one of those rough days when you just want the day to end, one office friend just shared about her intent to go for river rafting. Suddenly I had a flashback of my stint with this craziness called river rafting. It took me back by 3 years where suddenly in my previous organisation we had a river rafting season wherein everybody around had to share some pics of the river rafting they had been to, over the last weekend or were about their plans of going for it on the forthcoming weekend. Kolad, had become more like a must go destination and the most IN thing of the rains 3 years back.

In those days my Watsapp and Facebook used to get flooded with pics of people grouping with their life jackets on. Few of the pics were of folks sitting on the edge of the raft and eventually floating with their life jacket in the middle of the Kundalika River. The only pictures that used to appeal me were the pics where the groups were busy eating Bhajji Pav and Wada Pav post the rafting session along with a cup of tea. I used to get jitters thinking of river rafting as I was a hard core non-swimmer and non-adventurous types. Except the Bhajji Pav piece rest everything was repulsive.

One maverick friend of mine who used to have all adventurous escapades to maintain his sanity forced me to join him for river rafting on a weekend. I just couldn’t say no to him as even I was keen on getting my tick mark done on this river rafting crap. Through the week I got nervous pangs thinking of what to do if the raft capsizes on any of the rapids. I just wanted to get myself done with this crazy activity.

The D-day arrived and we got into groups to drive towards this rafting site. I was determined to take as many snaps as possible to enjoy my bit of footage of doing river rafting.

In Kundalika River the rapids are created by the damn water that they release at specific timings and we were running late.  We reached the venue did our registration wore our life jackets and immediately after the briefing session sat on the edges of the raft as per the trainer’s instructions. The raft starts sailing on the water and Lo the adventure begins, rapid after rapid and we were swirling in the water, taking deep breaths not knowing when the raft would capsize. It was indeed a breath-taking experience surviving each rapid.

After few kilometres of facing the rapids we entered calm waters. It was bliss to realise that I had survived all those rapids and was out of it. The instructor informed us that now it would be calm waters for few kilometres until we reach the river banks. Suddenly I saw the folks jumping in water. I was pretty sure of not doing any stunts, especially after surviving all those rapids. One by one everybody from my raft jumped into the water but I was stay put in the raft. For me water escapades were only until such time that my feet are touching the ground and my neck is way above water level and here the instructor was telling me get into water where my feet won’t ever touch the ground. The instructor encouraged me to jump into the water giving me full confidence about the safety factor as I was wearing the life jacket. I was reluctant about getting into water but the instructor insisted and after lot of apprehension holding the rope of the raft with lot of negativity I entered the water. Then the instructor suggested me to release the rope which I did and there I witnessed one of the best experiences of my life. I was facing the blue sky floating on water, for the first time I was off my feet floating on water. For the first time ever I just wanted the floating session to go on for the next few hours.

Even after reaching the river bank I was still mentally floating for a while, I could still feel the calm water and the clear blue sky above me.  

The rafting got over and on my way back to Mumbai, I suddenly realised that while I had the best of my time I somehow missed on taking snaps. I was very sad with the realisation that while I completed the entire cycle of rafting I didn’t have any snaps to flaunt. I had actually forgotten to click pictures.

 A co-rafter added some sense to my sadness by just admonishing me saying that forget snaps just think about the experience you had for the last few hours, the snaps may get lost but the experience will stay with you. At that moment whatever the co-rafter said didn’t make any sense to me as the fact remained that the event was over and I didn’t have any snaps.

Eventually now after 3 years it was only when I was narrating the entire rafting event in a high octane manner that I realised the magic and value of experiencing things in life.

Unfortunately, now I only see people busy clicking pictures to be shared with others, rather than actually experiencing the place. I find it very funny when I am sitting in a restaurant and see people clicking pics of the food first before actually experiencing the magic of enjoying the aroma and savouring the food.

Guess what, I changed my phone lost all the snaps which I ever had on my phone, I may even have some trouble recollecting all those events of which I lost the snaps. But, I still remember the rafting experience as fresh as if I would have done it just last weekend for which I don’t have any snaps.  

I hope we get to experience events where we just forget to click pictures and gradually start living beyond the lens.  

 Sachinkodolikar@gmail.com

WHATS hAPPening

 

WHATS hAPPening

People belonging to the 1980s and before have become testers to the evolving technology that we all have seen over the last few years. There was a time when the most IN thing was writing slam books and gifting greeting cards on birthdays, friendship days and valentine days. The Archies and Satyams were the only support system of those days. Somehow my generation saw the days of taking up a type writing and short hand course, to getting accustomed to an electronic type-writer, to the DOS on computer and then MS Office and now the whole wide world of Internet. 2Gs to 3Gs and now 4Gs.   

Almost 7 years before, people got blessed with a super messenger called Whats App. From individual messages to group chats, from pictures to videos and now from audio calling to video calling it has everything.  Long lost folks suddenly started getting connected on Whats App. Any regular smart phone user may have at least 5 – 8 various groups of which in 50% of the groups the person might be an active participant and in the other 50% the person may ends up been a mute spectator as it gets awkward to exit the group. While I would love writing down the various types of members that exists in the group, but that I will park it for a forthcoming blog. For now, would like to just ponder on the realism of this wonderful messenger.

One of the favourite pass times is forwarding jokes of one group to another. Now with the splurge in the number of groups it becomes imperative to remember which type of jokes is to be shared in which group. I have one group which is a school group, a pure boy’s group and by no ways can I share the jokes of that group with a group that has family in it or some elders.  One wrong joke in the wrong group and I may end up diluting whatever little credibility I would have earned. One more challenge with the groups is that many groups would have almost the same people barring 3 – 5 different names and by virtue of this difference there is limitation to the conversations you would have on those groups. OMG too much complication for a tool which may have been devised to ease out communication.

I was chatting with one friend on this wonderful messenger in the evening, that lasted for almost 15 – 20 mins and then this friend vanished after typing three mysterious alphabets and that was BRB (be right back) and after these 3 mysterious alphabets I wasn’t really sure how much time I was supposed to wait as I was just not knowing whether this wonderful friend of mine has gone in the neighbouring room to fetch his mobile charger and will be right back or whether he has gone to the market to fetch vegetables and will be right back or has gone to the Himalayas to get some herbs and will be right back or whether he has gone to collect some craters from the moon and will be right back. The next morning he messaged me saying that ‘sorry dude just got stuck with something’. Again I had 2 thoughts, firstly did he really think I was holding my phone the entire night waiting for him to be BE RIGHT BACK and secondly what did he mean when he said that he got stuck with something (fevistick, glue stick, fevicol and any other unknown adhesive) so hard that he couldn’t even type few words saying that he can’t continue with the conversation. Are we really growing insensitive towards each other?

I received a joke and thought of forwarding it on couple of groups. I guess showing your presence on the group is one way of proving to people that you are alive or else the next day may have rumours of your death. So just to reassure that I am alive, I shared a joke with multiple groups and in one of the groups a lady replied with 4 alphabets and those were ROFL (rolling on floor laughing). Out of concern I messaged her one to one asking where she was and she replied saying that I am waiting for the train to arrive at Dadar Station and the station is over-crowded as usual. I kept wondering as to how she would have rolled on the floor at Dadar station at peak hours after reading my joke. People at times type LOLs and when you would see their face you may see a constipated look. Do we really mean and do what we type.

We end up chatting on multiple chat windows at the same time. On one window you maybe blasting someone, on another window you may be expressing your love towards someone and at the same time in the third window you maybe joking with someone. All varied emotions running parallel. While I always felt that multitasking work was an IN thing but now it’s an epitome where we multitask emotions. Amidst all this we don’t even realise what our actual emotions are?

People don’t have time, hence now this wonderful messenger has come to their rescue. They claim to be the best of friends but don’t manage to meet each other. They claim to miss people but don’t even feel it important to meet/call them.  We all are migrating into relations that would start on a chat and end on a call. Long live technology.

I M Public

One more incidence of a woman been mistreated, now yet another opportunity for the media to have debates over women security, how the government and police are not competent to set things right. It even sets the stage for all our intellectuals to give their perspective on women liberation, conservative and chauvinist men etc. It even becomes a breeding ground to all self-defence programs for women and increasing sales of pepper sprays etc.

The focus is completely on the person who has got abused and the person who has abused.

In any given society we would always have few people who are mentally sick and are beyond correction. It was shocking to know that the accused in the Bangalore incidence did this act because it was a Dare given.  If these men can step on a woman’s dignity to satisfy their adrenaline rush of winning a dare, we all can imagine what mind-set these people come from. All these defective characters can’t be corrected nor be eliminated. They would continue to be an integral part of our society.

In the same society we shall even have women who are subdued by nature; they would be the last ones to raise their voice or stand for their rights. It may happen because of their upbringing, culture, their own experience in life or been subdued is an integral part of their DNA. While the progressed and educated society always expects the entire female fraternity to be strong and standing for their rights, few of them just can’t make it to the progressed society’s expectation of been strong. 

Now, in a society where morons (beyond correction) and subdued women prevail together, the million dollar question remains what is to be done. The police force is always there to support and protect but the fact of the matter is we just can’t have one policeman per woman. Again we come back to the million dollar question, what can be done.

Morons and Subdued women together in the same society, how do we avoid any mistreatment towards women?

The larger problem I observed while viewing the Bangalore incidence clipping was there were 2-3 guys who got captured at the end of the street and they didn’t do anything about it. I was aghast the way they just were bystanders while the morons were misbehaving.

Our country is known for its tolerance towards many things however the 3 – 4 guys, who got captured as by-standers in the video, were they really tolerant or were they cowards. Under the garb of showing tolerance are we really becoming cowards? Have we developed multiple reasons for hiding our fear? I still keep wondering that these by-standers didn’t even feel like giving a loud shout which could have saved the situation a bit.

This takes me back to my childhood days.

I stayed in Dadar for more than 30 years, rather a Dadar born. I lived in one of the most crowded areas, as my house was stone-throw away from Dadar Station. Due to been densely populated it was a heaven for pick pocketers, chain snatchers etc. One of the greatest childhood entertainments for me was standing in the window of my 3^rd floor house and peeping out of the window to some chaos happening on the road. The chaos would typically be that a person was caught snatching a chain or robbing something. The robber is running ahead and public is running behind him to beat him. Eventually, the robbers developed a repulsion towards robbing not because they became ethically sane but because they got scared that if they are caught robbing PUBLIC BAHUT MAREGI (Public will beat them crazily).

PUBLIC, a gathering of stranger that do not have any name, identity or face. They are all individuals who are just trying to reach at some personal destination, but the moment they hear a cry for help all these individuals suddenly come together and become public and come to the rescue of the aggrieved person.  The robbers of my childhood days minimized their robbing activities because they were scared of getting caught and beaten up by the public.

 Today, as a father of a school going kid I keep wondering where this PUBLIC has disappeared and even if Public still exist why are these jerks no more scared. Has the erstwhile Public now taken up the role of a by-stander? Why are these morons not scared of public anymore? Have they taken the power of public for granted? Has public forgotten its power of togetherness? Or we really don’t want to be a part of public as the women of my house and known circle hasn’t got impacted yet.

I am a middle-aged not so physically fit man. I am not a celebrity or a rich man. I don’t know any form of martial art or self-defence technique. I don’t even have a licensed pistol or know how of any other weapon usage. But guess what, I have the intent and the courage to be a part of the public who will scare the shit out of the morons who would try to abuse any woman.

As the dialogue of Sholay says, Yahan se pachas pachas kos door gaon mein ... jab bachcha raat ko rota hai, toh maa kehti hai bete soo ja ... soo ja nahi toh Gabbar Singh aa jayega. In the same way all morons should get scared thinking better behave nahi toh Public aa jayega.

I want to be a part of Public which will make a moron think twice before committing any crime against women, if you wanna be a part of the public who can keep the morons at bay, join public. 

Iampublic1@gmail.com