No escape!

When I told my friend Manish that I have a blog where I put down my views, opinions and feelings he was very amused. “Why should anyone bother to read it?” he asked me innocently. And when I told him that it wasn’t for people to bother but my way of expressing what I felt about the world around me, he felt it was a futile exercise. “You should bother about your life first and make that a success before trying to comment on the world or try to change it!” And the argument ended with his comment: “Even in an aircraft they always instruct you to put on your oxygen mask, in times of crises, before helping others!” But does this logic really apply to life? Is it truly possible to change the world just by making our own lives comfortable? Is it possible to do away with poverty in the world by making ourselves richer? Is it possible to clean an entire city just by cleaning our own backyards? But that’s what the mindset is these days… everyone is busy calculating personal profits in any enterprise. A strange kind of apathy is spreading like venom in our veins. Even as we are in transit from our old world into the new, we seem to have developed a defense mechanism to save ourselves from acknowledging the fact that we have to do something and do it NOW if we have to save humanity from total destruction… Our ancestors devised a system and that may have worked smoothly for centuries but with progress and our increasing numbers these systems are failing and are on the verge of a breakdown. Before it turns to anarchy it is our duty to help formulate a new system to suit our world. It will be tough… we will have to give up a lot but is there a choice? How long can each of us run away from this truth by finding personal means of distraction? I can’t help but quote Bhattsaab here. He told me once, “We can’t switch on our personal air conditioners in summer and pretend that the weather outside has changed!”