This is why India will always fail - 2

The maid super-hurries through her work today. She has to go vote, she says. She and her daughter have been paid 5K to vote for some douchebag political puppet, she says. (Her words, not mine, as translated loosely from an enthusiastic burst of rapid Marathi that I choose to interpret this way)

Despite the money, she’s going to vote for someone else, she tells me, with a cheeky grin that I can’t quite help mirroring. She's clueless, really, about the whole thing, but she’ll choose a face/symbol that seems slightly more familiar than the others, she decides. But vote, she will.

I raise my eyebrows in mock horror, but I guess until I go out there, and cast my own vote – which must logically follow the making of an informed decision, which again, given my complete lack of interest in politics, may not exactly happen - I dare not judge anyone. Not her, not the douchebag, not the system.

The question is, what’s worse, eventually - ignorance or apathy? Then again, who knows? And who cares?

This is why India will always fail

Sunday started out just fine. Woke up early, enjoyed a cup of tea and left for church. Amazingly, I was wide awake and attentive during the sermon. That little anomaly in itself should have told me that the day would turn out differently.

So, we’re driving back from church, stopping only to pick up some stuff and this really fantastic chocolate cake for my brother - whose birthday we were celebrating that day – when, WHAM! And wow, those guys in the car in front suddenly look really close. We’re bumper to boot and beyond. And even before I’ve completed that thought comes the next impact, this time from behind, as another car slams into us, and hellooo, welcome to the party!

How’d that happen, you ask? Maybe it all started when this one particular Mr Patel got dropped on his head a lot as a baby. Or maybe it was when he somehow twisted his brains around an ear bud while attempting to clean his ears and pulled it all out in a gooey string of grey. Whatever it was, years later, in the middle of the road, he calls upon the single remaining brain cell lying lonely in that vacuum-like space between his ears to make a snap decision, then brakes abruptly to make an illegal U-turn through a grassy median, thereby starting a chain reaction behind him in which no less than 10 cars slam into each other and lose their looks in less than 10 seconds.

This is what my car looks like now; in serious need of a nose job, emergency plumbing and much, much more. And a stray thought...holy crap! This is gonna cost an arm and a leg – and very likely, a kidney.

 And this is what the whole line of unfortunate cars looked like. I feel especially bad for a Honda City that looked like it had just lost a fight to a truck. 

Of course, an accident attracts the police like a picnic attracts ants. They can smell the possibilities from afar no doubt. So they arrive at speed and begin inquiries. The Patel guy, with his Gujarat registration car, miraculously hangs around; his fight or flight response seems to have momentarily failed him. 

Then begins the laborious taking down of numbers - car numbers, phone numbers, the works – while trying to sort out the situation of a dozen angry people looking to assault the nitwit who spoilt more than just their day.

We’re all asked to take our damaged cars to the nearby police station where ‘things will be taken care of’, they say. Being a psychic might’ve helped in knowing that the only thing to be taken good care of would possibly be Patel bhai’s fat wallet. The rest would be an exercise in futility.

So, now you know where you should go if you scew up real bad. You will be granted absolution (at a price, of course, but whatever). It’s also where you should not go, should you ever need justice. 

Of course, our car never made it to the station thanks to a broken radiator. While the husband was fast losing faith in the keepers of the law, I waited for the tow truck instead.

 

And there she goes, being towed pitifully away. We won’t be seeing her for almost a month now – or so the garage guys tell us. Also, the estimate for damages came by as did the insurance numbers. Apparently, selling a kidney will only be a joke, and no one wants my arm or leg more than I do, really. *sigh* *fume* *fume* *fume*

The only bright spark to the otherwise bad morning was the tow-truck guys’ kindness. They dropped me home, making this my first ever ride in a tow truck/jeep. That, and the fact that we did end up celebrating my brother’s birthday, damaged cake and all. I guess it is something to be infinitely grateful for, that it was the cake that got smashed, and not our skulls. I think very highly of seat-belts now.

But the fact remains that our country will remain this way – a gutkha--chewing, pan-spitting, bribe-taking, relatively hopeless nation until its people change; until we find it in our conscience to want to change. 

 

Till then, for the relatively few, kind people here, specifically those who helped us by their presence, or over phone, God bless you all.

And for those who turned out to be a disappointment to humanity itself, my black tongue wishes you nothing less than alopecia and syphilis. Maybe also hemorrhoids, thrown in for good measure. So there!