It's time to fly

I don't exactly remember when did I acquire this habit, not that its strange or unique or anything, that I simply can't start my day without newspapers. For quite some days recently my newspaperwala is testing my patience by either giving me HT, Telegraph or no newspaper at all. This has finally diverted me into reading the e-paper on www.timesofindia.com.

So, like every other day, I woke up today morning to find out that once again I have to log in to the timeswebsite. Just as I went there, I found a headline saying -
" 71% say they are proud to be Indians."
It was certainly a news worth reading into and after I was done with it, I was quite astonished to know that this 71% comes from all over the nation...from metros also.

So, like Mr.Maugham starts in 'The Razor's Edge', here also, The man I am writing about is not famous, and probably he never will be. Coincidentally, he is one amongst those 71%.

He is really a very simple man. Ya, he does read a bit of newspaper everyday but that's all there is to it. Also, that habit of reading the newspaper, which he has cultivated over the years, hasn't really improved his general knowledge in any sense. Ya he surely does know the corporators and MLAs in his locality but when it comes to simple trivia like the name of George Bush's shoemaker's daughter's school's Headmaster's Son's girlfriend, he is found speechless.

For some vague reasons, he follows the civic elections quite curiously but more stupefying was the fact that he shows no interest in the US presidential elections. Not that he is particularly uninterested in the international politics only, he is clueless about the celebrities also. Of course he does know a lot about the Indian cinema but surprisingly he didn't quite enjoy the movies by the hollywood greats like Jim Carrey or Quentin Tarantino.

Astonishingly, his music tastes are also quite unrefined. I don't really know where did he form his impression that Indian Classical music is older and also probably more melodious than the western giants. In fact he's so naive that I have once heard him claim that Classical Music Ragas have been a result of research for hundreds of years and there is a vast theory behind the kind of music to be played at a particular time of the day. In spite of all this I didn't give up. I made him listen to a few Beatles songs and passed some important facts like in which Beatles song, the lead guitarist's girlfriend got impressed by his friend and then ran away with him and then how they were separated later on. But these interesting facts didn't impress him and his impression remained more or less the same.

Well, he certainly can read and write English. He does read the TOI everyday. When I asked him out of curiosity the reason why he reads the TOI, he said he quite admired "You said it" by R.K.Laxman for his satirical take on the things in the Indian Society. He simply adored the concept of Common Man. I could not help but pity his sense of humor. I asked him if he had read Dilbert or such other American cartoons and surprisingly he had but he didn't find them funny. I knew that he needed some time to mature.

Recently, I met him after a long time. I asked him how he was doing and he told me about his recent project of working as a social worker in the red light area. While working for the welfare of prostitutes there, much to his horror he found out that a lot of sex workers are gays. He felt the strong need to have some kind of a legislation for gays in India. On hearing this, I asked him whether he knew about the gay rights in U.S. and England. He was oblivious to such things. He didn't even know the much publicized gay marriage of Elton John for he didn't know Elton John either. I gave him a lot of inputs from my side about the state of affairs in the U.S. and U.K. but he was expressionless.

If all this insanity, weirdness, indifference to the world were not enough he has reached a new pinnacle now. This is certainly going to make him a subject of mockery. He is too naive to realize why no matter where he goes people will laugh at him. He is going to be a subject of derision by his contemporaries. Well, I quite forgot to tell you why, right? He has bought a new T-Shirt saying - "India Poised, its time to fly!"