Thursday, June 5, 2008

The Butterfly Effect

If you think that it’s going to be about a yet another very stupid subject (like my previous posts), with all kinds of very stupid words, written again in a very stupid tone, your God just saved you. This post simply compares our country with some of the so-called developed countries. Now, is it going to be boring? I will make sure that it is not. Because what I am going to compare is the mentality of the people of these two almost different worlds.
Now, what could have motivated me of writing such a weird kind of piece? The answer: the German roads! Ehh… why? Because they are very very very clean. Now, probably you have an idea of the thousand-times-told-story-kinda-boring-and-predictable things that would follow, but I humbly request you not to stop reading.
From the very childhood, we are taught in the subjects of Moral Science and EVS (I still don’t know its full form though), that we should keep our country clean. So we mug it up hard. We should keep our country clean… We should keep our country clean… We should keep our country clean… and then we go out of the school, buy a Centre-Fresh, throw the wrapper on the road, run back home, spit the chewing gum outside our house and enter shouting, ‘Mom, we should keep our country clean!’ A reply of the same volume level hits our ears, ‘Better keep your house clean first and then think of the country, you useless creature!!’
And we grow up like that. The sense of responsibility lacks from the very beginning.
We live as ‘I, Me, Myself.’
‘I am leaving this hotel today anyways, so why bother about using the toilets in a clean manner.’ Yes, that happens.
‘If I throw this one coffee cup into the dustbin, the other thousand coffee cups lying around won’t fly back into the dustbin on their own and a single me cannot make the country clean.’ Yes, we think like that.
Fine. I don’t intend to make this a long monotonous school-principal’s speech. All I want to say is this.
Forget about the poor illiterate people who don’t even know the meaning of cleanliness or country. Forget about the rich illiterate people who don’t even know how to run the country even when they have the power. Forget about those rich literate people who don’t bother to look outside the windows of their imported cars because they don’t have time from being intimate with their darling well-dressed dogs. Don’t expect anything from them. Think about yourself and how you can bring about a change.
Bring about a change? WTF!
No buddy, I am not going to ask you to clean up the roads or join NGOs or put up awareness posters or to do something great for your country, neither am I going to ask you not to go and live abroad.
All that I urge for is that please keep the wrapper of the chocolate that you ate in your pocket till the time you find a dustbin even when the friend who is walking along with you has already thrown her/his wrapper on the road and is laughing at you.
May be you are a laughing stock for the first couple of times, then you are not paid any heed to the next couple of times (because it has been assumed that you are nuts), but if that person has any kinda self respect, a day will come when the same dustbin will be blessed with two wrappers instead of one!
And then, in the next say at least 70 years that you live for more, there would be millions of iterations like these that would result in may be very very slowly obtained but yes, some positive solutions. And that’s how the Chaos Theory or the Butterfly Effect works, right?
And then, you can dream of at least dying in a cleaner India! =)
With that, I sign off.

18 comments:

Akash said...

chalo its good to know that u will now be throwing the garbage in the dustbin . Welcome !

the full blood prince said...

@akash
I 'always' did that dude! :)

Ashish Kumar Srivastava said...

A very strong feeling captured not so strongly but nonetheless good attempt
At least you tried :P
keep up man

the full blood prince said...

@ashish
thanks for the much needed criticsm dude. will definitely improve.

Chinmaya said...

Good issue raised. Raised too often in fact; but this one was a fresh, new perspective. Sounded less like a lecture than it actually was! We are Indians dear. And one of the most important traits of ours, also to an extent responsible for whatever lukewarm success we achieve and have achieved, is our srongheaded-ness! We are born stubborn. I hope you understand what I am hinting at?

Deb said...

Shame on you. Wrappers idhar udhar fekta tha ab tak??!! :P

keep writing.. and I am expecting Jaipur and Kharagpur to be clean soon, first. :)

On a serious note, I learnt nt to do that frm Tempoda. Ever since he picked up my wrapper in Cal.
Tere bagal me rahta hai, hopefully notice kiya hoga.
My suggestion is, pick some1 else's wrapper once and you'll change the other person forever.
And you'll see the butterfly effect.

Btw, its good u told ur readers not to stop reading so many times. I was on the point of abandoning it so many times. :P

Looking forward to a cleaner India. keep it up, dude.

see, I am regular with my comments now. My comments will soon increase ur reader count.

the full blood prince said...

@chinmaya
actually yes dude. now this is our problem... that we think that we are the indians and we have been like that and we will always be like that.. and that's where the problem lies.
However, the reality is that it's not in the genes but in the mind.. and that's what needs to be changed.

the full blood prince said...

@deb
That seriously is an excellent way yaar that you mentioned. Long live the Tempo and his tempo! =)
I didn't know that before. But all right.. I guess we are going to have a clean wing at least very soon! And a clean India too before we die.. hopefully =)

ronsin said...

good one again.. nicely written... good style of bhashanbaaji... not going to change me much though... ;)

the full blood prince said...

@ronsin
Ronsin, aap tto bapu ke avtaar hain aur aap hi aisi baatein kar rahe hain. Gandhi (the original one) ne kahaa hai ki koi apna wrapper neeche feke tto tum uska wrapper bhi uthaao. And lets see if this works. We'll try it out once, or okay I'll try out once on you and then let's see.
And btw, thnx for the taarif! I always love it :P

Unknown said...

yeah nice!!

Actually, frankly, that's what we have been doing in our school!!!
it was a rule!!
And as accepted, we found it idiotic with all our egos...
but now, when we have a school get-together, that's the first thing we make sure:
"Hope the wrapper is in the dustbin!!"

Bet you didn't know this about me!!! :P
Nice, though!!
Keep 'flying!!'

Sumit Kumar said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sumit Kumar said...

Nice One!
The Indian railway stations ihave all those long quotes written like "Cleanliness is next to Godliness". But while so much of time and effort is spent in attaining Godliness, it seems that the "next" never comes.

Just a weird "Gandhigiri" inspired thought! Next time you find someone dropping some wrapper sort of stuff, just pick it up and carry it to the dustbin. This will affect the onlooker tremendously. :P

the full blood prince said...

@dark gal
thanks :)

@sumit
actually yes.. the 'next'never comes. It's just that somebody was asked to phrase a good slogan and now government and NGOs do their job by painting it beautifully at places.
Btw, this gandhigiri thought that you talked about, Ankik did the same with Deb and Deb changed!

Anonymous said...

Sometimes, we throw coffee cups & stuff wherever we are without even giving it a thought. We just throw them.

But, if you realise it, please try to keep your egos aside & pick it up. If you do that, you will make a mark on the people around you. It happened to me once. I wasn't the onlooker.:D

What are we talking about anyway? Where are the dustbins in the insti??

the full blood prince said...

@casinaroyale
dustbins in insti? well.. at every nescafe, there is atleast one. and in our department, there are many, from the place where we enter to every floor and i hope even the CS dep have them! :)

the full blood prince said...

@sushant
Thanks for the appreciation dude!
But I've got replies for you.
Yes, I was comparing Germany with India because unless you compare yourself with someone better, you have no scope of improvement. So a comparative analysis of our position is always necessary in order to make it rise.
You said that the Indian youth is the best in the world? Now that's what is the problem with us. We assume that we are the best, our culture is the best, our nation is the best and everything else is bullshit and we live in that matrix and finally die in that matrix, not trying even once to take a peek out to see if another (read 'better') world exists. I don't say that we are irresponsible but dude, the people of other countries speak in their mother tongue rather than English when they go to pizza hut and they feel proud about it and they prefer wearing the local brands rather than Levis and Koutons and they again feel proud about it, the point here being that we must stop living in that matrix that we are the most patriotic people in the universe.
So, as you said, the problem does lie in our heads, but not when we move out of India; but when we think that the world starts and ends in India.
You said that we want India to be like other countries but that can't happen. Give me one reason why can't it happen. To say that it'd take a lot of time for that to happen would be more appreciable and practical.
Being 'patriotic' (as you said) is not accepting ourselves as we are and living like that, but to strive and improve and surpass others.
So dude, I was not 'blaming' anyone for what they are; I am more patriotic than anyone around me. I only saw something that was better and gave a small try for 'our' improvement.
I really appreciate the criticism and welcome further discussion, if any.

ruchi said...

very well said...we have start the change from our own before blaming others :)