Irony

I look around me. And I see Irony everywhere.

I see people working 12, 14 hours a day and then complaining that they hate their jobs. Talented singers, sportspersons, authors. They sit at their desks all day long. When they were kids they dreamt of being singers, sportspersons, authors. Now, everybody dreams the same thing. Deadlines. Meetings. Appraisals. And of course, they all have a dream job. You know, singer, sportsperson, author. It always remains a dream. Maybe that’s why they call it a dream job. As young, idealistic teenagers, they prided themselves on being different, unique. Now, they look around and realize, they’re the same as that guy in the next cubicle. Or is he in the same cubicle, they’re not really sure.

Everyday, I am astounded by how complicated life has become, when we’re actually trying to make everything simpler. Every step we take we have to make a million decisions. Some of them downright pointless, but necessary. Say, getting a sandwich from Subway. You’ve got two minutes to decide before the guy behind you in line asks you to speed up. Two minutes, you have to decide which bread, what vegetables, what sauces, the works. I mean for a person not used to making decisions, in there you’re making them like lightning. “Wheat bread”. “Cheese, but don’t toast it”. And then you finally get your custom-made sandwich, and you start eating it and wonder, “This tastes the same as the one I had yesterday”. It’s like playing Mario. You know the Princess is at the end of the last level, but to get there you have to get through all the levels before it. To get to the sandwich, you must go through all those decisions. For a sandwich.

The bureaucracy stumps me. Here we have people whose job is to get us the documents we need. They try everything in their limited power to not get them to us. We fill out five, ten different forms in triplicate with photocopies of obscure certificates. You have to prove that you were born. Incidentally, that fact that you are standing right there is not enough proof. Some of these certificates are so ancient that you have to handle them in temperature controlled environments. That’s not the end of it. If you’re lucky, you’ll have to “get them attested by a gazetted officer”. Now, this person is not your ordinary government official. And unfortunately for you, he/she knows it. You go at 3 in the afternoon. “Sir/Madam is not back from lunch”, says the disinterested watchman. You have your own deadlines, meetings, appraisals to worry about, so you return to your cubicle and go back the next day at 11. “Sir/Madam has gone for lunch”, says the same disinterested watchman. Eventually, you discover that these people appear/disappear from their offices at speeds approaching, sometimes even exceeding, that of light. And, that your only real hope is the disinterested watchman, who for “something something”, will get you whatever you want, signed, in 2 days flat. How does he get them to sign that form? I mean, does he threaten them with Chinese Torture? I really have no idea how he does it. This guy is the cornerstone of the entire system. Take the watchman/peon out of the equation and you have a system where nothing gets done. Nothing.

I hear young couples everywhere use words like “giving you your space”, “taking time out”, “going too fast”. Because, out of the blue, her “cute little habits” have become “irritating tics”. He used to be “very protective”, but now he’s “just too possessive”. Simply put, what was once magic, is now routine. I mean, how is it a surprise? Didn’t you know who you were falling in love with? Thanks to Archies, Hallmark et al, “Love” masquerades as tiny, cute, porcelain figurines, that are “nice to touch and hold, but if broken consider sold”. Also the cards, with deep, insightful messages like “You are the light in my dark”. What is this, some kind of soap opera? Will we ever realize that there’s more to love than just falling in it?

The Olympics fascinates me. Higher, Faster, Stronger. Dedicated people from all around d the world competing for everlasting glory. Ethiopia, famine country. Hunger is just another feeling, like feeling sleepy. The long distance running medals have already been booked. Cuba, wars against a military leader, gang wars, drug wars. Their boxers pummel the hide off anyone else in the ring. China, ravaged by a devastating earthquake months before their Magnum Opus. The opening ceremony leaves the world spellbound. India. One billion people celebrate a first ever individual gold medal. Somewhere along the way something went sadly wrong. How can men and women from lands torn apart by civil war, famine and nature’s wrath win medals by the basketful, while a seemingly prosperous nation, is satisfied with the lone medal every four years? It is important to do better than your competitor, but it is more important to do better than yourself. Somehow, we must have missed this chapter when Prepare For The Olympics was being taught.

Terrorism is everyone’s problem. But apparently, it’s because a particular group of people, sometimes referred to as a “party”, was ruling the land. Bombs exploding right and left. Killing people, scaring the hell out of the rest. And you hear “the people’s representative”, on a 24/7 news channel, no less, declaiming loudly that the ruling party has “failed the people” by allowing the “attack against humanity” to happen. If nothing else makes you lose faith in democracy, this definitely will.

The environment is everyone’s problem too. Instead, it’s everyone else’s problem. As put quite elegantly by a soft-spoken software mogul, “We clean our homes and throw the garbage on the roads”. On a global scale, a treaty has been drawn up wherein every nation pledges to bring down pollution. Every single nation has ratified to it. Every single nation except the biggest defaulter. That’s a bit like hanging the pickpockets and fining the murderers. Where the environment is concerned, it shouldn’t even be a choice to make. But obviously, when you can make a bit more money by screwing the atmosphere, so be it. We know we don’t have another planet to escape to, and yet we go on destroying what remains of this. We wage wars, spend millions, to become masters of a strip of land on this tiny piece of cosmic flotsam. And yet we cannot take care of ourselves as a species. Everything and everybody we’ve ever known exists on this pale blue dot. How many more mistakes can we afford to make before we too go the dinosaurs’ way? Remember, the dinosaurs had the excuse of that great big asteroid. What excuse will we have?

For the million and one “24x7” news channels, any human catastrophe is a windfall. All they have to do is play, re-play ad infinitum, the 5 seconds of blurry footage caught from someone’s mobile camera, on screen, forever. This is done until the heat from that piece wears off. Hopefully for them, something else hugely interesting will have happened by then. Like a romance between two no-hope actors. Or a wardrobe malfunction.

We spend hours upon hours thinking about that bug in our code. We’re still thinking about it as we throw the garbage out onto the road. In between our attention is caught by some breaking news about Britney Spears getting a divorce. Again. Still thinking about it as we burn plastics and watch the fumes swirl up into the air, and voila. The smoke disappears every time, so lets burn some more.

Why do we do this? Why don’t we ever think about the things that really matter? How many of us throw that plastic bag in the general direction of the overflowing garbage pit, instead of into an empty bin that said “Recycle”? How many of us think we’re in love as that cute guy/girl in the cubicle next to ours smiles at us? How many of us celebrate seeing India at No. 11, fleetingly, in the medals tally instead of wondering why we aren’t up there at the top? How many of us do what we truly love to do? How many of us settle for ordinary?

I look around and I see Irony.