The travails of a lonely entrepreneur !

The Delhi Success Story

Just got some work done by the neighborhood tea stall owner. He also happens to lug around stuff on his makeshift cycle-cart, so he was helping me move my goods from home to the store. While we were at it, he gave me a bit of a sad tale which touched a chord.

He told me that one of the residents from our “society” ( a collection of apartments is called a society here …) had duped him of some money. I was wondering how someone could dupe money out of a tea stall owner on the roadside. He replied that this guy (well educated and all …) had promised him, that he would help him set up a tea stall outside the mall. The bugger took an advance of Rs 700/- and then promptly disappeared from the horizon. He switched off his mobile phone for a few days and then about a week later, someone else picked up the phone and told him that – this was not unusual.

Wow! I could not even think of doing such a thing to a poor sod on the road side stall. But more than that, it led me to wonder. Is this where we are headed as a country. Will our future generations take such behavior as “normal” and then think of someone being nice, as a “loony” case ? Is the new definition of success all about how many helpless individuals you can fleece ? All around me the city seems to be losing its humanity. Every day I can hear stories which appall me to newer levels. Every day I can see thousands of people breaking all road rules and abusing each other. Every day seems to be a tad more chaotic than the day before !

I fear that we are headed for a catastrophic failure of civic life. As the crime spirals beyond a point of no return, and as the people slowly lose their humanity – this place is going to crumble to the dust, like so many historical examples of great cities gone wrong. We are not far from the brink of social lunacy. As the government looks on helplessly – being tethered by the “rich and powerful” , the poor people on the road are getting more and more desperate. Soon all of them will take to violent crime to make ends meet. The vision of the Mahatma is in shambles – independence it seems has failed to inspire us to any notable achievement as a society.

I wonder why we cannot help ourselves. We seem to be too rooted in the phones, LCD TVs,cars , gizmos and cricket. We the people of the land of the Buddha have forgotten “dharma”. We have become worse than whores selling our souls for a few currency notes. If someone asked a random guy on the Delhi roads – How much for your soul ? , the guy would probably start thinking of a number ! Like hollow zombies we walk and bump into each other – while our personal axes are grinding incessantly in our heads. Some of us feel the situation is getting worse – but who cares. The need to escape overrides our need to correct the situation. And that is why we cannot change anything for the better in this country.

To sum up let me define success in the Delhi perspective. A successful person in Delhi will :

• Lie incessantly and without remorse. To the extent that radio jocks on the local FM channels have competitions of the “average Delhi liar”.
• Be able to dupe helpless individuals of their resources by promising things that he never intends to deliver.
• Have an abusive vocabulary
• Drink and drive and kill people
• Charge exorbitant amounts from customers, and treat his own workforce like shit.
• Not respect his own words and position – constantly mutating his views to adjust to the money flow.
• Rape and kill helpless women who happen to cross their path.
• Be a fat leering SOB who will drive the knife through your heart. smiling all the while !

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