The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

As is stand atop the over-bridge of Clapham Junction with lots of colourful trains passing by below me, read an article from today’s evening daily. Why being a billionaire in Zimbabwe is pointless. A loaf of bread cost Z$10 million a couple of weeks ago, it cost Z$20 million in the last week and Z$100 million this week. The government has introduced a Z$500 million note and limited weekly withdrawal from the banks to that amount. People depend on Church handouts and reliefs to survive. Unbelievable situation eh!

Any calamity, natural or man-made is the time when we see the best and the worst of the human characters. I’ve witnessed a few of them. As far as I can remember right now, it started with 1997 Cyclone in west coast of Gujarat, 2001 Earthquake, 2002 riots and 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. On one side when you have hoards of people coming in to help, platoons and platoons of NGOs working in parallel with the Government, National and International Humanitarian Organizations almost instantaneously to mobilize men and material for aid. I’ve seen people in Aurovilleworking tirelessly to recover lost house-hold items after the tsunami. The scale of the impact was just so gigantic that it leaves you wondering. I particularly remember the view of the sea just a couple of hours after the killer tsunami. It was sandy red. It smelled. The sound of the waves which otherwise is very soothing and unites you with the nature, that day was just scary roars of natures wrath. The sea had just engulfed thousands of people. The irony of the people who died was that they were mostly fisherman. Usually the sea is the soul source of their livelihood and the same sea had turned their predator. There were hoards of people helping each other out to rescue, rebuild and recover their belongings. Similar thoughts come to my mind when I saw common men carrying policemen after the Mumbai attacks, on TV.

The flip side of human nature was visible immediately after tsunami as new-paper reported lot of bodies found without wrists and fingers as criminal minded people had chopped them off to get the rings and bangles out of women. That thought makes me sick even today. How can somebody be so ruthlessly barbaric, they are just inhuman!

I guess the good, the bad and the ugly are packaged into all of us, its up to us to rest (RIP) the non-required ones. There’s a cuddly lovable and fantastic Charlie and antagonistically ruthless and selfish Hank (split personality characters of Jim Carrey in Me, Myself and Irene) in all of us. The world needs more good people, more smiles, and more cheerfulness, more Charlies. That’s why I believe these festivals were invented. So that people have a reason to celebrate. A couple of guys from office tell me over lunch today that “we’re not into Christmas; we look forward to the holidays and long leave”. Fair enough, whatever makes you happy! That was the whole plan, wasn’t it?

Office was gloomy and tremendously under-numbered as people have taken off for Holiday season. I must admit here that I’ve been feeling a bit home-sick (ah! Who am I kidding, a lot homesick). And hence the gloomy post. Not feeling to well as well, English winter has caught up with me it seems. With a promise to myself to be more cheerful in the next one..

Ciao