Civic-less Sensibilities

I made pasta today. It was an exceptionally annoying morning. Nothing annoys me more than having to be somewhere early. And early in my dictionary is anything before 9 am. 

Second in the list of annoying things is having to motivate people to clean up around themselves. Dont get me wrong, the mission / endeavour is great, but the arguments and retorts people come up with is unbearable. Its so unbearable that I dont want to even put it down for posterity! The reason it was exceptionally annoying is that just one month back, JUST a month back we all roamed around the main market, talking shame and sense into all those shopkeepers who encroach on footpaths and throw their stuff into drains. And they were just back to pavilion in no time.

 I firmly believe that something like this has to come from within. 100 employees of some government department cannot be running behind 1 lakh population. It simply cannot happen that way. And I realised today that it isnt that people dont realise how they are responsible for the cleanliness of their surroundings. The fact is they know. But they just dont CARE! This realisation  has hit me really hard.. because I thought I knew how to show people their responsibility but I just dont know how to get the horse to drink the damn water! I mean when you have all the who's who of the political scene and NGO scene and government scene etc talking about cleanliness all day all night, something's got to percolate into an average human right? But isnt happening here! And I am lost. And I hate having to sacrifice my precious sleep and late mornings to things which make me feel lost. That too on a holiday!

So after roaming around the city from 8 to 1 shouting myself hoarse at glassy eyed , disinterested people, I came home all tired and glum and with a cold building up from all that dust. So I decided to indulge in some comfort food. I found this recipe on yummytummy - a simple veg pasta baked. Its so easy to make and really much better than just pasta in white sauce. I clubbed it with a fresh cucumber & tomato salad with a basic dressing and hot toast. It was lovely...

What would have made it perfect though, would be my better half's presence, light conversation, laughter and the feeling of sitting down to a nice little Saturday dinner with family. 

Caste-ing the 'love' net!

An incident took place the other day. I am at a loss for an adjective to precede that noun 'incident' in the previous sentence. I hope anyone who reads this will help come up with something befitting!

Sunday morning, 8 am, me snoring away in bed. Staff rushes in and wakes me up saying there's a girl at the gate saying she wants to meet you and knowing that I dont like meeting anyone at my home, he hastened to add that they have told her to meet me in office next day but she just wont listen and is sitting there and crying. Fearing the worst kind of trauma, I rushed to make myself minimally presentable and called her into the room I use as my office. 

Her sob story was that she has an elder sister, 20 years old, who is refusing to marry the boy chosen by her parents and is instead insisting on marrying another boy. That her mother is going to have heartattack from all the anguish and crying and that her father has tried and tried to persuade the girl but she wont listen. I asked her what she wants me to do about it and she says shes hoping that I will call her and talk some sense into her. 

At first, I tried to brush it off saying, beta, yeh aapki paarivarik samasya hai, bade buzurgon ki sahayta lekar aap parivar ke andar sort out karo and got up to show her the door. She burst into tears saying all that had been tried but her sister was adamant.  Then I got curious as to whats bothering this girl? I can understand parents bringing the house down on this issue, but arent siblings supposed to standby each other?  So I asked her why she was crying so much about it and exactly what about her sister's choice does she have a problem with ? To this , this 16 year old replies with the greatest trepidation in her voice, ma'am, woh ladka doosre caste ka hai. meri didi aise kaise kar sakti hai! kabhi aise suna hai aapne! And then went on to rant about how this other caste boy has trapped her sister in his net and how much her parents are suffering because of her harebrained sister's unimagineable love affair.

At that moment I went through a range of emotions. From anger to stupefication to irritation to plain surrender. I even asked her, why do you think its wrong? havent you been taught in school that differentiating between people on the basis of caste is wrong and meaningless.. she just rambled on something through my questions the essence of which was just that caste is caste , how can she marry outside it. Its such a sad and sorry testatment to our education system and to our culture that even now, this concept of caste is so ripe and so deeply ingrained in our children's psyche and the ideals are constitution glows with is academic at best.. no words can describe my disgust and disappointment with that girl and the entire episode and its larger ramifications.. 

So, how did it end? I stood up and told that bleeping girl that I will not and cannot counsel her sister and she should leave. And when she incredulously asked me why, I told her that I have had an inter caste marriage and I believe strongly in favour of it. 

The only good part of the incident was the look on her face when I told her so :)