Saving us ?

We are a population that swings between two extremes.  In size, in availability of stuff, and what money can buy.  On one side there is the mobile cycle idliwala, wadapaowallas, and homebased poha-sabudana khichadi morning vendors who sell outside railway platforms.

On the otherside there are those who flaunt and disobey every rule in every book, to reap maximum profits from selling food to those who shell out an equivalent of your months rent, for a ordinary dish presented under false pretences and a fancy name. This is done under a facade of modernity, flouting every law and rule . Most of the time when someone in power benevolently looks the other way .

The middle class types, gingerly holding on to their non nonsense thinking , mind their salaries, their childrens' futures, read about all this, wonder whats going on, and what direction it is going in. 

Sometimes they agonize over their child perhaps being attracted by it all.   



The aimless wandering tiger
reached a peak
and then,
with minimum thought
and maximum excitement
like they show in cartoons,
jumped across a deep valley,
to a peak of another mountain.

He learned
behaviours at the peak,
how to look down,
and got acclimatized to places
unsuitable for tigers,
what with the missing streams,
no dense bushes camouflaging his desires,
and changing mores at the top.

Yes.
Instead of crossing over in the valley,
observing darting deer,
occasionally chasing one,
checking on elephants on the other riverbank
celebrating baths
as he took careful sips on his side.
Then a learning curve
as he trudged up the mountain,
stopping, imbibing, making mistakes,
correcting them,
respecting his environment,
sometimes being the animal he was,
judging other animals
including even bipeds, sometimes.

Today, we are the jumpers,
confused in values and abilities,
and only dedicated to being at the top
in language, abuse, money and quicktime,
with completely lost values.
Some of us are on the incline,
in the woods,
not yet out of them,
but getting there
with RFID's of slog
and qualifications of learnings
around our necks.

It isnt us,
but those who jumped,
that need to be "saved";
remember ?

A generation, that went too fast.