A licence to kill?

All the characters and situations in this story are purely fictional. Any resemblance to anyone or anything would be considered as purely coincidental.

It was that day that ll remain famous in the world forages to come. Joan had just prepared the lunch for her husband and he was about to go to the office. Joan won’t go. She is on maternity leave and she is expecting the baby anytime now. Joan and her husband Ted have been married for 2 years now after a courtship of 7 years. They were lovers since high school. Till now their family has been completed by the little Jamal, the next door kid, who used to spend most of his time in their apartment. Used to. But now Joan was progressively becoming possessive about her own child. She has been growing possessive about her little family, she ted and the new kid. But she likes it or not, Jamal still is important to ted and she can’t change that. She has made cheese sandwiches today. While on breakfast table she tells Ted not to go today. When she dismisses her by saying that he needs to work she says “I think today is the day”. “Usually other mothers say that with shrieks due to labor. Come on Joan you know that I need to work” he said. “Fine. I don’t want you to go. I just want you to be here. I just don’t feel like letting you go today”. “Joan,” interjected Jamal “Let him go. You know he works in that huge towers and they pay him so much. They would certainly be annoyed if he doesn’t show up at work. He can only take off if that building comes down.” “You see even he seems to understand, don’t worry honey, I ll be back early.”

And there goes Ted to his job. Who knew he would never come back. Its 9/11 and there is a terrorist attack right on the building where ted works. The building came down. Joan heard the news on TV. This is the end of her world. She is shattered. There is knocks on the door. “JOAN” “JOAN” “Open the door” she answers the door. “Mom called and told me to get over here and stay here. She says people may attack our apartment for the terrorists were Muslims.” It was Jamal. She let him in and she went into her bedroom. She was not able to hold her tears but she was not crying. As the TV news went on about terrorists being Muslims and about attacks on Muslims for their support to these people, her anger grew. She thought of the child sitting outside in front of TV. She thought about her husband, his smile, how he loved that kid, and what his people had done to him. She saw the cross on thewall and saw Jesus suffering and she could not hold herself. She went outside with the apple knife in her hand and slit the child’s throat and cried.

Did she do right? Should someone understand her? Has she got a licence to kill? Even if not can someone analyze her emotions? Can someone say why what happened is wrong?

FLUSH

We all want to be good. May be we don’t know how but still that’s what we want to be. We practice self control, diplomacy etc. etc. We spend time establishing relations and nurturing them. Still we are unable to clean our minds. We are used to thinking, bitching, contemplating, analyzing and judging which not only makes us dirty but also does not let build a clean aura around us. You know it’s a well known fact that even some atheists believe in the concept of karma. If not then what does those who believe in the saying “As you sow, so shall you reap” believe in? And when we talk about the karma philosophy it’s not just the actions but also the intend that matters. That is why it matters what we think and what work the piece of flesh in our heads does. And probably that’s why we can’t be that much happier, as much as we deserve coz we always think and while thinking it’s very easy to deviate and think ill. Just look back and see how many times you pounce upon some questions in your head like – “he is really a bad person. He did me good but he must have something out of it. Let him come next I ll see him. Humph he thinks only he is the one who can do it. Let my time come then I ll show him. etc. etc.” Well this is exactly where things go wrong. If anyone has heard of the Lord’s Prayer it says “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespassed against us”, see even god does not forgives until you forgive others. That is why it’s important to get rid of bad thoughts too. Now when you go to a loo and find the seat with enough s****y material inside it to build castles, what do you do? Yes, you FLUSH. And these bad thoughts are that shi**y material in your head. Won’t you FLUSH it? This is how you go about it. Watch your thoughts all day and all night. I mean all the time you are awake. Whenever you think that you have started thinking bad about someone or started judging someone just say out aloud “FLUSH”. And believe me with the word you ll be able to visualize the flushing watery action. And with that word will be gone all the thoughts that made you ill. Try it even if it’s embarrassing, infact the more embarrassing it is the, more effective it ll be. Coz there is something that stretches our abilities. And that is fear or the fear of embarrassment. Believe me it ll be very very difficult. But that’s the way it is. Now you will know not every child can FLUSH his poop. It ain’t that easy.

Why A Delhi Autowala wont go on METER

Ok well I finally made it to Bhopal and had that sort of unplanned trip that I and doku always thought to have. While returning via delhi we had a delay of 12 hours in Shaheed express oh sorry THE GREAT SHAHEED EXPRESS that made us roam around in delhi for the whole day in which we discovered a few things.

The first thing we discovered, that forms the basis of this article was from a small chat we had with our autowala bhaiya who agreed to take us from nizammuddin station to Old Delhi station in 80 bucks while the prepaid rate was 60. That’s 33% right! But we didn’t mind coz no one was ready to go and no one ever talks about meters in Delhi. The conversation with the rickshaw driver began with a small question about the cost of the auto rickshaw. The answer left us flabbergasted. The auto costs around 4,35,000. That much for a CNG auto rickshaw? I would rather buy a sedan in that amount. But what is that that makes the auto so costly coz a car with CNG costs just a wee bit more? Well the autowala was again much more knowledgeable in the field. Well the auto in actual costs around 1,15,000 to 1,40,000 but you don’t get the permit. It seems that the high level financers have struck a deal with the permit givers or got hold of all the permits and are reaping huge dividends out of it. Well that is what seemed to us.

Now lets do some justice to the topic as well. I ll present here some facts that were told to us by our driver. Well as we saw the rickshaw costs around 4.5L in which if someone makes a down payment of 1.5L to the financer he has to pay an EMI of 8025 bucks. This is coz the financers also charge an interest of 16%. Now after a person gets hold of an auto he delegates the job of driving @ 250 bucks per DEHADI. The word dehadi means here renting of auto for just 12 hours i.e. from 2 to 2. Now the auto owner rents it to two persons. Well now if we do some calculations here what we get is that the owner after parting with the EMI plus even around 3k for maintenance makes a profit of 4k PM over his investment of 1.5L i.e. 32% per annum plus the payment of the auto i.e. 8k PM that makes it 96% per annum. Where would you get a business line better than this?

Now there is another person. The one who pays the dehadi to our owner. Oh well when we were asking for the info to the rickshaw driver he overwhelmed us with the information. You know how good we feel when we are masters in one field and the one in front of us knows nothing of it. How good it feels to explain the nitty-gritty s like we know all. Human Nature. Well he told us that he made around 500-600 a day of which around 60-70 goes in Gas. Now after paying his dehadi, he s left with around 200 a day that comes to around 6k a month. Now mind you this 6k is being earned by a person who is the actual hard worker and that too in a city like Delhi where cost of living is high. Now why would that person go on meter? If the people above have a right to earn then doesn’t he? Why not he also charge some more to one who may, who knows, be the one who may be charging some more to others somewhere out there. What would he get out of being honest if his children and wife die of hunger? What would he do with honesty coz you cannot serve it on dining table, if he happens to have one?

What we see here is a typical case of the negligence of authorities in minding those people who are exploiting people and minting treasures. What that guy told us may be trivial and a very normal thing for us coz we see that connivance everywhere in our everyday life. Or this may be abnormal to us, an anomaly. But what we compare it to? There are questions which that autowala didn’t answer. Coz I never asked. You ask questions about facts but you don’t ask questions about corruption whose sanctity no one can challenge. You ask questions to be aware but not to awake. Every day we travel in those autos, those buses, use those services but how many times do we wake up. But do we actually sleep? Or just do one thing we were taught in our nursery classes. FINGERS ON YOUR LIPS