This AGE

 

e Challan

I do not welcome this...like so many others

Day before yesterday, we went out for an early morning ride as the current weather called for it. On every light point/roundabout, you see new fixtures coming about with supposedly LED displays and high display CCTV cameras, pointing at traffic. Seeing all this every now and then till we were out of the city, didn't leave me with a good feeling and got the mind working.

Later, that same day, I received a text message stating -

Traffic Challan No. XXXXXXXXXXXX has been issued against your vehicle no. CH01BJ8449. For more details visit XXXXXXXXX. Chandigarh Traffic Police. WE CARE FOR YOU.

I was taken aback and after a day, today, my thoughts are advanced but certainly not riled up. To me it has started to occur that this place is not where I see myself staying in long term. The idea of being policed the way it is turning out to be now, does not help. I mean I was being policed earlier as well, but every time I would be stopped by a traffic cop it presented with an opportunity to strike up a conversation, wherein I would be asked "KYA KARTE HO" and the usual banter that follows, commending the cop for all the good work they been doing and you moving on. It was an interaction with another human, it was an experience, it was something you could talk about as a memory. But this - THIS IS STRAIGHT UP INDIFFERENT.

Chandigarh is now being termed to be a SMART CITY and modified as possibly so. Like so many other things, where you say something and mean something else, the actual definition stands out to be SURVEILLANCE CITY. I believe/understand that the only constant is CHANGE and I completely welcome it or at least I earnestly try to - but this - really - this does not look progressive to me. More control, more invasive, more data, more machined and more inhuman. Dark or light - I just don't subscribe to the idea of any cloud over my head, to me its all about clear sky or nothing. Am very sure that guys who sold this idea or if I may say forced down this idea, would have credible reason in some respect, but what one would not delve into is the percentage it applies to when compared to total numbers in whole. For very minuscule numbers, the whole would be subjected to an unreasonable situation. If the premise that humans are bad, and they need to be doctored/policed/controlled is the reason for certain strata to do what they are doing - then I am in disagreement. And if the following argument is to see history, that this is the way it has been done and so on - then yes, if we will keep doing the way it has been done then we'll keep getting what we have got - WRETCHED HUMANITY

If we will keep looking for bad in other, we will keep getting what we are looking. Rather than treating the symptoms, let's treat the disease. If there are too many of us, that the sheer numbers are stressing out the ecosystem in whole - then that is something we should talk/act about. If that is a result of our in built conditionings and what not, then that is where we need to work at. But no - we will not; we do not want to awaken the giant numbers against us who have been holding tight, a certain way of thinking because that has been making them go on in grim grim times - they will defend it with their teeth! So yea - why let our position of control go, let's get the optics right and give the notion of progress while maintaining some semblance of a system that is long DEFUNCT.

Like I said I do not like/welcome this and gives me all the more push to stay away from the mainstream. But yea, it's a beautiful morning to jot this down, with steady rainfall and spirit. 

Enjoy it while it lasts my friends.