We all know the classic Aesop’s fable about a group of mice whose
rotten, gutter-born life became rodently intolerable due to the constant threat
posed by the ever-looming presence of a fierce, menacing, blood-sucking, fanged
and poison-whiskered cat and that made a plucky young rat suggest the brilliant
idea of belling their predator. This idea was so sound but the prospect of meeting and belling the mighty cat became eternally unsound.
This pathetic situation reminds me so much of our situation
living with these guttery roads, tormenting landslides, rotting garbage, irregular
electricity, desert-like water scarcity in a heavy rain-fed area, lawlessness, remorseless vandalising agents, resource-rich
employment starved region, guns and factions, overground and underground issues and the pain
to make sense of things, substitute employee-keeping, absentee government
employees, paan-chewing board-game-playing customer care officials, the steep
and dangerous deepening gorge dividing two distinct groups of people, general apathy and the hopeless acceptance of ‘that’s the way it is’.
No doubt, there is also so much going on about what size the bell should be, what brand, what type of sound it should make, how loud its decibels and whether it should deafen and petrify the cat and his mates as well. Everyone has an opinion about how things should be and this is not new, for decades and decades we’ve all had these brilliant ideas but it has become impossible to bell the monster. Someone should do this, somebody should speak out... why can’t they make this better? They should start doing this, they should clear these roads, they should oil that machine, they should, they should and they should!
I wonder who are the mythical ‘they’ and ‘somebody’ who are going to do this and that and that?
