Mumbai Locals - No safe place

I came across an article today in Hindustan Times (GRP, RPF pass the buck over bullying on locals - pg 6). About how many Mumbai Local train passengers have to face the menace of errant 'regular passengers' who lay claim over their 'regular positions' in the trains. And how many people blame the Government Railway Police (GRP) and the Railway Protection Force (RPF), who are ineffective in tackling this issue.

I have been a regular Mumbai Local train commuter for the past decade. And I have "been there, done that" so to speak. And I completely understand what many people have to undergo in the local trains. Like so many insects, we cram the train compartments - pulling, pushing, sweating, cursing, hanging at the door or bearing unimaginable pressure from all sides inside a compartment jam full of throngs of people. In Engineering Mechanics, we had a concept called a "Free Body Diagram". An object being subject to a multitude of forces, is isolated and displayed in the diagram, with all the force vectors represented by arrows pointing towards or away from the object. At that time, I had imagined drawing the Free Body Diagram of a Mumbai Local train passenger - a person standing in most unimaginably awkward and twisted position, with hundreds of force vector arrows pointing at him/her. For that is what a Mumbai local train passenger has to undergo.

We Mumbaikars are an ironic bunch. We are always in a rush. And we are never on time - always running late. Driven by a need to reach the destination asap - a need so obsessively and compulsively irresistible that we don't mind risking our own lives, or the lives of others. Time has value. For time is money. Life? What value does it hold? Especially in a place so crammed full of so many lives??? (Demand and Supply principle at work?) So we risk it all, as we struggle to reach on time...

Everyone who is anyone in India, and who can afford it, wants a piece of the Dream City. And so we see a constant inflow of new wannabe mumbaikars getting added to this already over-bloated mass of seething struggling creature that is the population of the city.

With all this seething overflowing mass of Mumbaikars leaving their homes almost at the same time in the morning, and leaving office almost at the same time in the evening - the unholy "Peak Hours" - what can one expect but traffic jams, crowded buses, over-crowded trains...? And after a busy and hectic day's work, when one has to face such inhuman travelling conditions, then there is bound to be some flare-up of anger, as the pressures become too much and we give vent to all the day's pent up frustrations... Inevitable, isn't it?

I guess this is the same picture that can be seen in may crowded cities all over the world? Or is Mumbai a special case? No idea. But one thing is for sure, we Indians in general and Mumbaikars in particular are very good at playing the Blame Game. Over-crowded trains? Blame the government and the public servants (Railways). Traffic Jams? Blame the government and the RTO. 

That our government and the public servants are ineffective in many ways and have many shortcomings is something I totally agree. But here's the thing. Any people will only get the government they deserve. I do not believe that the minister and the public servants are much different that any of us. The problem lies in us - we have a major moral deficiency. We hardly ever stop to think of whats right and whats not. It not always that difficult. A little voice is always guiding us, warning us. But we conveniently subdue it. 

And we blame the government for everything... 

Some things are in our own hands. Like not throwing away waste wherever we like. But its too inconvenient. So we throw waste wherever its convenient and then will blame the government when someone criticizes the uncleanliness in our country. Or, in the case at hand, it is always one of us general public who acts irresponsibly when we give vent to out frustration and anger and get into a fight with someone else (even I have done that a couple of times - and believe me, in the inhuman pressures that we are subjected to in local trains, it does happen). Or when we lay claim over a particular seat, claiming to be 'regular passenger'. 

And it is also us - the general public - who standby and mutely watch such errant miscreants openly do such unjust and rowdy acts in local trains. We will take no action. And we will not support the one poor fellow who does show his guts to stand up alone against such injustice perpetrated around us... We are too busy being in our eternal daily hurry....

Yes, some things are in our hands. But some things aren't. For instance, we cannot control the over-crowding in trains. So we expect the government to do something about. Increase the number of trains. Increase the number of boogies in the trains. Increase the number of tracks. Provide security to us from the errant behaviour of certain miscreants. But this is where the skeptic in me begs to differ.

If you are given the responsibility to ensure such security measures in local train, how will you go about doing it? How do you ask your men to travel in crowded trains, and take action against such errant behaviour? Especially when such unjust acts are perpetrated by bullies in big groups? How do you expect them to do this during peak hours when the trains are so crowded that one can't even move? Its not a herculean task. Its a freaking impossible task.

With hundreds of new arrivals everyday, Mumbai population keeps growing at an unprecedented pace. Whatever you do - increase the number of trains, or the number of boogies per train or the number of tracks, you will never be able to keep pace with the population explosion taking place in the city. The Mumbai local trains have always been crowded. And they will always be crowded.

The article complained about how people are not allowed to get down at Borivali in Virar trains... I have traveled in Virar trains. The situation is deplorable. They are more crowded than I could ever imagine. With majority of the labour workforce hailing from Nala Sopara, that's kinda obvious. But if you wish to go to Borivali, why get into the Virar train in the first place? Why be in such a hurry? It is obvious that you will invite the ire of the already troubled Virar commuters.

As for unjust and rowdy behaviour by some miscreants, it is inevitable. There will always be bullies. Common human behaviour. And, we, the aam aadmi (common man), will never stand up united against such unjust acts of bullying. Most of us neither possess the guts, nor the confidence in our unity. And it is impractical and impossible to expect the GRP and RPF do anything about it. Even the damn TC cant board the crowded trains in peak hours. How do we expect the railway police to take action in such situation? 

A related sub-article asked the readers to lodge their complaints on a facebook page by Mumbai Railway Police. That really left me scratching my head... Its as if social media has become one answer for all our troubles. How will it help when someone posts a complaint on FB? By the time you post the complaint, you are out of the train, and so is the bully. Who know who he is and where he must have gone to? How go you expect the railway police to recognize him, find him and apprehend him? Seriously? Am I going nuts? Or is the rest of the world (about social media)??

Maybe I am being very pessimistic about the entire situation. But over the years, I have seen the railway struggle to keep pace with the increasing hordes of Mumbaikars. And accepted that their pace has been slow, but whatever steps they have taken to ease the problems faced by daily commuters, have fallen grossly short of whats really required. The rate at which we are growing, I personally feel it is almost impossible to do much about it. Maybe I am being too negative about it all. But that's poor old pessimistic me.

Other peoples' crap

A Nullah flows besides our office premises. One of those many watercourses that cut through the Mumbai's cityscape carrying garbage, industrial waste and other unimaginably stinky and dirty things that a whole damn city is capable of discarding... Like dark blood its flows, from God-knows-where to destinations unknown... Its murky waters, always dirty, dark brown and almost completely opaque carry the flotsam of an entire city on its back... A crude and over-used industrial waste disposal system that originated in a bygone era, but is still being used heavily... It is by no means a small nullah. Well fortified by big stone walls on either side, and running 10-15 feet below street-level, it hardly ever over-flows, even in rainy season when it becomes a small raging river.

Usually I hardly ever look at it. Human nature: we hardly ever notice the obvious, the routine and the unsavory... And the nullah is certainly an obvious and unsavory sight... Nothing remarkable about it anyway... The other day, hurrying on my way to the office, I happened to look down from the footpath at the nullah below. Its at right angles to the road. The dark water flows towards the road and then disappears below it, as if its passing below a bridge. As it flows, it lets go of some of the weight its been carrying on its back, depositing debris at the base of the 'bridge' as it passes below the road. There are plastic bottles, plastic bags, random thermocol pieces, and a lot of other dirty discarded floating bric-a-brac that no one wants. All this bric-a-brac has formed a small floating island of sorts at base down below. Right in the middle of this island I spotted a guy. 

He was a young fellow, still in his teens, assuming from his young looks and his wiry body-frame. Standing waist-deep in all that dirty smelly muck... He was holding a plastic gunny bag over his back with one hand. With the other, he was sorting through the floating debris, salvaging recyclable waste... Not the most desirable job in the world... As I hurried along to my office, the image of the teenager stuck with me. I couldn't shake off the thought of him, wading though all that dirty garbage carelessly discarded by a careless city...

Why should he have to clean up other peoples' mess? Wading through all that stinking garbage and disposed (may be toxic?) chemicals, trying to salvage things that can, and should, be recycled?

The obvious answer is - for money. For subsistence. For his daily bread... Thanks to our system which solely relies on economic inequality of individuals to make it work... This system, that transcends beyond borders and countries and races and castes, is what makes our world work the way it does today... And this little fellow is one little cog in the entire complex machinery... So, we, who are economically better disposed than he is, can afford the luxury to get rid of our crap any which way we want. Someone will take care of it for us... Blissfully ignorant about what he must be going through, to clean up our crap... Of course, he is doing it 'voluntarily'. No one is making him do it... But is that not the way it works? No one makes us work. We do it on our own (even if we hate it and don't wish to)... 

But I am wandering from the main issue here. The main issue being, that we (here I am referring to the entire human race...) are utterly careless about how we dispose the waste we produce, whether it be personal or industrial... Who gives two hoots about whether it is recycled or disposed off properly? As long as our home and offices and factories and streets and cities and dwellings are clean, we don't mind what happens to our waste. We don't even care to throw our crap in dustbins... We will throw it anywhere that's convenient to us...

As I write this, a crumpled ticket that I had discarded on my desk falls down. My friend looks at it and tells me to pick it up... I do so, but reluctantly - its a nuisance, so inconvenient, to put crap in its right place... Then I think about the boy in the nullah... I get up and throw the ticket in the trashcan, where it rightfully belongs... But I don't do this every time... It's simply too inconvenient... Sad but true... And what will happen to the ticket that I just put in the dustbin? Will it be recycled? Will it end up in a garbage dump where it will decompose over the years? And what about the waste that doesn't decompose? What happens to that?

In this modern age, we are producing, manufacturing and consuming our planet's resources at an unprecedented pace... I wonder what will happen if we continue this way? Its a staggering thought... Huge population + limited resources = massive inflation (high demand + short supply = duh!) Add to this equation the factor of economic inequality and we have a major breakdown of our system as we know it on our hands... I finally give up thinking about it... My thoughts wander back to the poor fellow toiling down there in the stinking crap-filled nullah. I feel sorry for his present and for the world's future, and get back to my daily routine business-as-usual...

Telempathy: a boon or a curse???

A time comes in every person's life when they wish they could understand another person's thoughts, feelings, innermost desires... Telempathy would have been a boon to mankind. For is not the failure to understand another person the sole reason for interpersonal strife? Such a boon would have ensured no communication gaps, no misunderstandings, no quarrels and fights...

But we humans are strange beings. Paradoxical in out very nature... We are like the Moon. We can shine so bright and beautiful. And at the same time we all have our dark side... And there is a reason why the dark side of the Moon is never visible to Man... We are capable of so much love, at the same time, so much hatred too. We can be so positive and hopeful, and at the same time so negative and destructive... We are so full of promise. And at the same time we hold such darkness in the deepest recesses of our hearts. Darkness that can hurt not only us but our near and dear ones. We are somehow, not always capable to face the harshest of facts and realities of life. No wonder, we prefer illusion over transparency... Hence wisdom dictates that some thoughts are best kept to ourselves. Some secrets are best never revealed. Some feelings are best buried deep in the darkness of our hearts... And some words are best left unsaid...

And when one realizes this, then one can thank the powers that be for not granting us the curse of understanding each others thoughts, feelings and innermost desires. It has saved us from destroying each other, and ourselves... It has saved us from emotional turmoil, and a certain insanity... It has saved us from ourselves...

An economic slave's economic dilemma

Being a student of science, the simplest intricacies of economics, money matters and related things have always eluded me. An unhealthy disregard for news viewing or reading hasn't helped either. And so as I grew up, the everyday events and the working of the real practical everyday world, which is so closely related to economics in general and money in particular, has always managed to leave me clueless and feeling like a stranger in a strange land (thank you for that superb phrase Mr Heinlein)... The major question that kept nagging me was somehow related to the fact that I work hard (hard being a relative term) and I am fairly intellectual (at least I like to believe so). And yet, here I am hardly making ends meet (technically that's an exaggeration, but lets not get into technicalities shall we?). Well, I am okay with my meager earnings and a frugal existence. What really gets to me is the fact that so many other less qualified, less gifted, certainly less intelligent (does anyone smell hubris here?) people earn so much by apparently doing so little... They wear good clothes. Roam in big cars. Own big houses in high end areas. Can afford to buy all that over rated and expensive stuff at the malls... While I have to manage my spending, all the while struggling, working my ass off, day in day out, to earn my daily bread... Does that not sound unfair? It certainly does to me...

So, I set out on a noble quest to dispel my ignorance and figure out how the real practical world worked, especially the monetary part of it... Now let me refrain from getting too over-dramatic here. Laziness aside, suffice it to say that I did try to show a marginal interest (which is certainly more than I used to do before) in every book I could lay my hands on regarding money matters. And a few documentaries helped me out too - from the eye opening Inside Job, to the scary Collapse... Of course, the specifics of my quest were less related to economics in general. It was more related to the how and why some people earn better and apparently with so little effort... And the answers were quite easy to come by...

I first tried to find them right around me and my workplace... A worker earns less. A manager earns more. For the longest time, I resented this fact (which employee doesn't?). But after long deliberation and getting to know some of my supervisors better (and realizing that they too were human after all), I arrived at the conclusion that their higher pay scale may be justified. Because the manager has more responsibilities on his shoulders than a worker does. The manager is paid higher to get work done, to take decisions, and to be responsible for the success or failure of the tasks entrusted to him and his subordinates. So, while it may appear that me and my fellow workers (here I consider the peers in my field as skilled labour) did all the work and our supervisors got away by merely tinkering around with excel sheets and attending endless meetings, the gravity of their work and the responsibilities and the pressure they face cannot be denied. So I grudgingly conceded that my supervisors earning more than me could be considered fair. So we have established that the higher a person is on the corporate hierarchical ladder, the more he earns. So far so good.

But then who was it in our firm, that earned more while hardly doing anything worthwhile? I kept looking up and up the corporate ladder, realizing that everyone had some role to perform in this scheme of things, I finally reached the investors and stake holders... And that's where I found my enlightenment... The damned investors. They made no contribution to the work of the company whatsoever. They weren't even a part of the corporate ladder... All they did was invest their money in the company. So the employees worked. And a part of the profit that was a result of their sweat and blood went to the investors... In economics, the most fundamental rule is High risk, high gain. Accepted, the investors took a pretty high risk by investing their wealth in the company. But apart from that little fact they had nothing else to show as their contributions to the running of the company... And its not just the investors who invest in a company. There are those who trade in stocks. All they really do is sit around all day following the stock market and playing around with the money they already have. The more money you have to invest, the more gains you can expect on investing in the right stocks. Then again, there are those too, who deal in property. They invest once and enjoy the fruits in terms of rent for years and years to come...

Not everybody can be an investor... Making money when you have money is easier than making money starting from scratch. No wonder there are more riches-to-super-riches stories than rags-to-riches ones. Money pulls money. So the rich become richer. Usually by acquiring resources with the help of their money. And by exploiting the have-nots, employing them to earn hefty profits. Only a margin of that profit reaches those who toiled to make it all work... And while the rich grow richer, the poor grow poorer. May be that's an exaggeration... Maybe when there is employment, the poor earn too. But the ratio of the efforts that they have to put in against the income they earn, is much higher than that of an investor...

The human race has grown exponentially in the past couple of centuries. And the resources that our planet offers keep getting scarce. No wonder our economic system evolved into what it had become today. For with limited supply of resources, be it land, oil, food, water, power, etc, it is but natural that people with the means will try to acquire and own these. People with the means are of course the ones who already possess money and power. And it goes without saying that they will charge the rest for perusing the resources they own... So again the rich become richer and the poor grow poorer...

And this is how I arrived at my conclusion about what was really wrong with the current economic system of the world... It was apparent that money pulling in more money (i.e. Using money as a resource to earn money, whether by interest on the capital or by investing that money in other devices...) and acquiring and hogging up resources like land, fuel, food, etc were the root cause of all evil in the current economic system... The current system is entirely based on the universal human trait - greed - a human trait more prevalent than even love and hate...

Armed with this half baked theory, I decided to pitch in - get into the rat race so to speak... So I went ahead and bought a little flat. I had to, before the exploding real estate prices went beyond my affordability. While I despise this greedy tendency, I had no choice. "Stay hungry, stay foolish", as Ms Rashmi Bansal would put it. I did not want to be either. So I pitched in all my meager savings (funny how heavy you feel when your purse is suddenly light after you have decimated your savings to zip), and got a hefty loan from the bank... And finally I had an asset of my own... I too was in the race to get rich, richer, richest asap...

Then one day I was with a friend. We were having a nice little chat about life, the universe and everything... And our topics meandered from what a beautiful time we had in childhood to what a bitch life had become... The prices that soared, the earnings that did not soar proportionately, the difficult times we anticipated in the years to come... Necessities like fuel, water and food are getting scarce day by day. And the population is exploding at an ever higher rate... With short supply and higher demand, the prices for all these necessary things are soaring everyday... And will continue to do so in the future. I already have a loan on my head. So I will end up paying almost double the price for my flat, than it actually cost me... Soon I will be married. Have kids. My expenses will grow tenfold. With the average inflation rate going in double digit figures and the average rate of monetary raise still lingering in single digits, how was a decent working man to earn his daily bread?

Cynically, I suggested we start a vada-pav business. For those who aren't acquainted with this term - it's sort of an Indian burger... We laughed at the idea. Then we considered it seriously. It was true, the average vada-pav-wala, did earn good, it seemed, considering how we were fast turning into a gluttonous fast food nation... But then, there would be social pressure. I mean imagine an engineer or a business administrator running a vada pav ka thela. A hundred people would say a hundred things. Not to mention the fact that our expensive education would have been a complete waste... Weird, how the income and the scope of work of a well-educated person gets restricted while a seemingly not so well-educated guy living in the slums earns better selling vada pav...

It seemed as if my fate was carved in stone. I was destined to work in engineering firms laying digital brickwork for a living, earning a fixed income and helping the company investors quadruple their wealth... All that while, my salary would increase at a fixed rate each year, irrespective of the inflation rate... I would watch with horror and dismay as new young recruits, fresh out of college, would bag more CTC than myself - a well-experienced skilled labourer (I am already experiencing this nowadays). It would be a regular monetary jugglery - trying to make ends meet, paying for a good lifestyle for the family, and a good education for my kids. Added to that the extra burden of the home loan, the EMI carving out a major portion of my monthly salary. And added to that the burden of taxes, not only on my income, but also on the goods and services I buy... I was of the opinion that the services or goods provider should pay service tax, not the poor consumer like me who was already paying tax on his income. But a friend pointed out that if such a rule was enforced by the government, then the service provider will simply raise the rates to include the service tax within his charges. This way or that, we, the consumers, were bound to end up paying the service tax...

It was at this point, that my friend came up with the term "economic slave"... Its certainly not a new term. I might have certainly heard of it before. But it was the first time I was hearing it in my own context. I was relating it to my own situation... It was a horrific idea. And yet, so true... The term would keep nagging at me for years to come... My friend is in business. And he is no better off than I am. For he may earn really good one month, but might not earn much the next... In fact, the banks - the same ones who are sure to earn double the amount they loan out - flatly refuse him a home loan. To them, he is a high level risk individual - for he does not have a fixed salary... 

The unhappy realization dawned upon me - we were all Economic Slaves...

And who was responsible for this? It was my firm belief that the economic system was - a system based on greed and ambition and exploiting the dreams of the people. A system created by the rich to benefit the rich... Common man is a dreamer. Sell him his dreams. Create new dreams for him. And earn from him... For example: Create a mobile phone. Sell it for cheap. Advertise it. Make the people get used to it. Add a camera to it. Make it cool. Make it smart. Let the common man dream about owning one. Get him addicted to it. Make it a necessity. So he will go for one even if he does not have enough money for food, medicine or other basic necessities.

That was my conviction until recently, when a colleague of mine opened my eyes, showing me how my interpretation might be flawed. We were again talking about my favourite topic - how life was a bitch and we were all economic slaves. I told him how I felt it was wrong that we should work so hard and the investors should earn from our efforts solely based on their current wealth - by investing in the company, and doing nothing more... I had told him earlier how I had bought a secondhand book for 100 rs and had sold it online for rs 150 - a straight 50 rs profit. He pointed out that fact to me... "See. You had this book. It was a resource you owned. You sold it for a profit. What was the effort in that? You owned something. You sold it. Earned from the transaction... The same is true with the investors. They own the money. That's their asset. Their resource. When they are investing in the company, they are just selling their resource, and profiting from it, albeit in the long term..."

I had never thought of it this way before. Never thought of money as a resource. When he explained this to me, suddenly the apparently convoluted unethical system of money looked simple and ethical enough to me... It seemed to make sense.

So I was back to square one. I was still an economic slave. And I had no idea how or why...

Cities are good for you... Are they, really?

I am in the bus. On my way to office. Like so many others. Crammed in that bus, like mango pieces in  a pickle jar. Its Rush Hour. There is a reason they call it that. For we are all in a Rush - trying to reach our offices on time.

The bus stops at Andheri station bus stop. The stop is right outside the Andheri Station Bus Depot (West). The conductor gets down. Usually a conductor never gets down from the bus en route. Not until the bus has reached its final stop. But this one does. I know this one. I encounter him at least a couple of times a week, when our times coincide. Unlike most of the young bus conductors nowadays, this one is older. A man who has seen better and younger days and is now counting his years to the retirement. He must have some health problem for he always gets down from the bus at the Andheri Bus Depot. He goes into the depot relieves himself and comes back. can't blame him. A traumatic bladder can be a real pain. Especially when trapped inside a bus, where every jolt sends a fresh stab of pain through your underbelly. It must give him quite a bit of relief. For he is usually cranky, until he relieves himself, after which his is quite calm and normal.

It takes him 5 minutes, that's all. But the passengers get cranky. For those 5 minutes in the rush hour can mean a late mark for an office employee. A true Mumbaikar is so terminally frustrated of traffic jams and crowded public transport, that he will die trying to catch a bus or a train, but will never tolerate waiting. Its just not in our blood. So it was not surprising when people started whining about the actually marginal, but apparently monumental delay. I know the feeling. I have whined a few times before. A guy besides me says: "What is this? How long will this idiot take? He has conveniently gone to take a nice piss. And a shit too, probably. And here we are stuck for God knows how long. What a bloody swine..."

I kept quiet. But the whiner continued. Finally something snapped inside me. I told him that the conductor was human too. Was he not entitled to a moment to relieve himself? If we are in the same fix as him, we can get down at our destination and relieve ourselves. But he has to travel from the first stop to the last with no prospect of a break... But I could see by the look on his face that he was not convinced. He was soon joined by others. One of them said that if the fellow had health problems and was getting too old to perform his job then he should quit... I was shocked... What has the world come to? What have we, city-dwellers, become?

The other day someone from a small town looking for a suitable match for their girl told me the first thing they were looking for in a guy was that he should be a city-dweller. This small-town father was sick of the slow life in the town. He wanted his daughter to have better opportunities. And only a city with its infinite resources and opportunities could promise her a good life... All sound logic - it reminded me of a book I recently came across, titled -  Cities Are Good For You... It explored similar logical reasoning enumerating the benefits of city-dwelling... All true and logical... Except for one small side-effect...

Everyone flocks to the city. Everyone wants a slice of their favourite dream come true... But that makes the city a very crowded place. Resources stretched thin. Heavy competition everywhere. More mouths to feed. Less space to live. Lesser air to breathe. More lives to support... In this milling chaos, one is reduced to being like an animal... Living in highly expensive claustrophobic little spaces we call a home, eating costly stale food. Drinking chlorinated water. Breathing polluted dust-riddled stale air... This is the life of a city dweller - a person reduced to living a life of an animal, while wearing t-shirts that talk about being human... Have you seen people clamouring and struggling to get into the trains at Andheri or Dadar railway stations during peak hours? Experience it and you will understand...

For sure, Cities are good for us... As long as we are ok with living like desperate animals...

To be or not to be, is the Question...

The world is a laboratory. We are the guinea-pigs. Our dreams and desires are the cheese that drives us. Our workplace, the giant wheel within which we run endlessly in pursuit of the cheese. Reality is the electric shock that pushes us every time we tire and slow down... That's how one may view the world if one takes a pessimistic enough view of it...

We are all in the rat-race. For the cheese, we so crave... But there are a few who really don't care. Neither for the cheese, nor for the electric shocks… But is that really possible? To be a fish that does not wish to swim? To be a bird that does not wish to fly? Maybe all this bird wants to do is fly. To be free of the surly bonds of earth. To soar in the endless skies. To feel the wind buffet it, ruffle its feathers; carry it higher and higher... Into the clouds... Beyond the clouds.. This is all the bird wishes for. But it has to come down sometime or the other. To rest. To eat. To sleep. Otherwise it will tire out and simply fall away, as the earth's pull beckons...

How I wish life was as simple as that of the bird, the fish, the lab-rat... They have no choice. They do what they have to. Caught in the endless cycle of nature. But we? We are no birds. No fish. No lab-rats. For we have the gift of choice… The ability to think. To decide what path our life takes. It makes us better than the other species. It gives us control of our lives. It’s our blessing. Or is it our curse?

Is it really a sin to not want anything out of life? To not be in a rat-race? To just want to soar in the skies, but not want to return back to earth - to eat, to rest, to earn ones living? For all the rest of those lab rats who are already in the rat-race and who care for you, think it is. They care for you. So they want you to be safe and secure and earn your daily bread like they do. Confirming to the ways of the real world... So even if you don't want to be in the rat race, they will push you into it. Because they think its best for you... Are they right? Are you wrong?

Suppose you disregard them. Suppose you just soar high up into the sky of your desires, the clouds of your dreams hiding the ground of reality below... But for how long? You will always have that fear nagging at the back of your mind. Fear of the unknown future.. What if something bad happens to you in the future? And you are helpless to do anything then? Because you did not prepare for it in the present, compromising with your dreams and desires, in order to secure your unknown future? How will you feel then? Sometime it is this thought that pushes the reluctant dreamer to abandon his dreams and get into the rat race... To do what has to be done, instead of doing what he so desires…