My dis-illusionment with my fellow Indians and the extent to which they exhibit the depravity of the human soul, touches new heights (or is it depths?) every day. To be honest, there are moments (several of them) when I’m alternately embarrassed , pained, anguished or aghast at what I see and experience !
I am not attempting to adopt the moral or intellectual high ground (I’m as Indian as everyone else is) but we seem to be living in a society where it is Darwinism at its best : struggle for survival and survival of the fittest (the strongest elbow wins the race!). And our circle of concern ends at the tip of our nose or at best, the sweep of our arms - no further than that.
These are the stories in my hall of shame :
Society meeting : Having recently achieved the exalted and much-envied status of owning my own house in Mumbai, I attended my first Society meeting last week. I naively took with me a wish-list of items for discussion : Could we plant more flowers in the garden and could I work with the gardener on this? Could we fix the loose tiles on the pavement outside our building so it looked nice and my mother (and I’m sure everyone else’s as well) didn’t risk tripping over them every second day? And oh, could we re-plant the withering palm trees lining the street so the approach to our building looked pretty? And so on…………you get the drift, don’t you?
So it was with naïvete and unbridled enthusiasm that I plonked myself on a plastic chair on the front row. Understandably, hubby and I were one of the first few to be present. We waited and waited and waited… 30 minutes later, we had not met the quorum. Another 30 minutes later, per Society rules, it was decided to run the meeting with only 20 members present (out of a possible 83 attendees !!).
Issue # 1 : Extending the grill outside the window : the builder has provided a grill outside the glass windows for safety. Given that we’re never short of ideas and also given Mumbai’s insatiable appetite for additional carpet area, people have gone ahead and extended the grill. Some enterprising souls have gone further ahead and put a slab on the extra space creating a nice little sit-out . Isn’t that nice? You pay for 1000 sq.ft of carpet area and then extend it by another 20 sq ft with nary a concern for the legal or safety aspects of your action. Did our enterprising architects think about the additional property tax that the Society would be liable for? Worse still, did they think about what would happen if everyone decided to adopt their brilliant floor-plan idea and do likewise? What would happen to the structural stability of the building when the builder clearly mentioned that he had not provided adequate load-bearing pillars for extensions such as this?
Worse still, when I questioned this, someone mentioned that the individuals concerned had given a letter to the Society taking individual responsibility for such alterations. So, some one flat no. so and so gives a declaration stating he is taking responsibility for my life and that of my family’s if the building were to come crashing down?????? Is that what this means? And did I give him the right to take responsibility for my life? The whole thing seemed so ridiculous I didn’t know whether to cry and jump out the window (since the meeting was in the Refuge Area, there were no barricades on the windows !) or do some deep breathing exercises to prevent a cardiac arrest.
Issue # 2 : Shoe rack kept outside the main door, in the lift lobby : someone buys a 3-bedroom house measuring some 1200 sq.ft and then discovers he cannot accommodate his shoe-rack inside the house. So what does he do? He smartly places it in the common area outside his house. And then spends the next 20 minutes puzzling over why this should concern anyone and why it has to be brought up in the Society meeting . So I said today it is the shoe rack which is outside, tomorrow it might be the washing machine and day after, may be the kitchen stove. If we all decided to keep our stuff outside, we might as well have days when we take the kids and camp outside, in the lift lobby (especially on days when the domestic help decides to put you through the ‘so where are you without your domestic help’ test). At least you won’t have to clean up !
Issue # 3 : Condition of servants’ washrooms on every floor : I don’t know whether I want to even talk about this. Suffice it to say we spent 45 minutes discussing the sorry condition of the washrooms (understandably, the drivers/maids and security personnel used the marble-and-vitrified-tiles washrooms the way they used the unconstructed but instantly available public washrooms liberally dotting the Indian landscape : you can do anything anywhere and you don’t need to clean up afterwards ). There was much noise from residents whose olfactory organs were deeply offended by the resultant odour.
Oh, and some folks, with due consideration for our perennial water problems, had decided that dry bathrooms were the best way to save water - so they helped themselves to all the bathroom fittings.
Finally (and not surprisingly) it was decided that we would, in the short term, open a few bathrooms in turns, and seal the others. Everybody had to gear up for 6 weeks of odour-filled living, or plan on a vacation (since the schedule for opening bathrooms was to be displayed on the notice board !). A young mother in row no.2 started to ask whether the scheudule could be tweaked to synchronise the opening of the bathroom on her floor with the summer vacation but was quickly silenced by the combined glares of 20 pairs of eyes.
For the long term, it was decided to shut down all the bathrooms and build a new bathroom in the basement (away from the sensitive noses and peering eyes of all residents ). All’s well that ends well you might say except for a small point : the total area of all the 30 bathrooms is around 7000 sq.ft – for which, we residents had paid a not-so-insignificant sum of money and here we were, not only squandering away all that real-estate but also planning on spending more to construct a new bathroom.
Talk of money down the drain – literally so, it would appear.
In the land of the Mahatma who extolled that we must be the change that we wish to see, not one hand was raised when the call went out for a volunteer to collect some information from all members.
After about 6 long minutes, unable to bear the pregnant silence and the tightly clenched fists held firmly by the sides, I raised a timorous hand. Hubby sighed in the practised manner of one who knew exactly what was coming.
And finally, after discussing many issues of a similar nature, the meeting ended. I came home with a head the heaviness of which was only matched by that of my heart.
Why this utter and abominable apathy to rules and norms of civilized society ? Why do we feel virtuous about breaking rules? When we gleefully jump a red light, do we stop to think of what would happen if every driver on the road thought and acted likewise? Or do we believe we alone have the right, by some divine ordination, to behave as we please ? Why can we not respect public property? I would think a blighter who has no place to pee would be happy to be saved the ignominy at least a few times in a day. Or is he, like our Ministers and sundry politicians, so used to being exposed that it no longer matters?
Oh, yes…. I forgot one more important point on the agenda : Rs.3.50 lakhs due towards Society charges from a few members !!!!! The flat was rented, the owner lived in Dubai and conveniently forgot to pay the society dues. So while the rest of us forked out the 8K monthly society charges (mind you, this isn’t pocket money for anyone – not even someone who’s bought a flat for 80 lakhs) , some wise Alec in Dubai was presumably having a huge laugh at us idiots who actually believed Society bills had to be paid on time ! I can imagine his dinner-time conversation with his wife : ‘Darling (or may be, ‘aji sunte ho’) I caught up with Sharmaji who lives in our flat in India and would you believe it? He said the society was asking us to pay the maintenance dues !! No, no wait : I haven’t come to the punch line yet : all the other sodden folks have apparently been paying this every month!!” And I can hear the peal of Mrs Dubai’s laughter as she marvels at her husband’s cleverness and goes tut-tut at our stupidity.
And so the Society decided to hire a lawyer to figure out how to get people to pay their dues..
Throw the blighter out and cut off the electricity and water supply, we said. Not so easy said a wizened veteran from the back-benches. The law doesn’t allow you to do that.
Seething with rage and frustration I poured out my heart to some friends only to have them raise a quizzical eyebrow at my consternation. “So what’s the problem?” they asked. “This happens in every Society.”
What to do - we are like this only - but why, dear God, why?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment