Degeneration

Alec's latest post triggered a certain slightly repulsive memory which I had thought to share earlier but had forgotten.

I was at the airport (all my posts seem to revolve around airports nowadays) and was juggling some coffee and some other assorted pieces of luggage. In came galloping a 7-year old and I pointedly took my coffee and kept it out of the reach of his prancing feet. But he decided to come rushing in from behind in such a way that the coffee got spilled and some of it, over his foot. He raised hell and high water and his mother started screaming at me, calling me an Idiot and what not. People all around rushed to administer gallon after gallon of water on his foot, ice, whatever they could find while he kept howling and she intermittently screaming at me.

Now, I would have been extremely sympathetic and apologetic and all that in the normal course of events. In this case however, because of being shouted at, I found myself unable to sympathize and hung around purely due to a sense of responsibility to see that the kid was fine, which he was, considering he had been wearing proper shoes and socks anyway.

I thought about this some more. We tend to be very careless with our speech, and constraint has no nobility anymore. I say this for myself also. When an auto driver mistakenly takes me to Vile-Parle early in the morning, when I had said Bandra to him, and as a consequence of which I miss the bus to that godforsaken Belapur, I lose it too. Annoyance is definitely warranted and maybe a certain degree of admonishing will induce him to be more careful from next time. But not a full-blown abuse session, no Sir, that is a bit much, even if what he did leads you to be at the receiving end of your Boss' ire.

We are fast becoming a group of people with zero tolerance levels and no respect for basic human courtesy and dignity. Our problems are the dire-est, our time the precious-est and the injustices meted out to us - the most unjust.