Would I do that if I were paid so much more?
“Who smokes
beedis these days!?” said my friend.
“Quite a lot of
people that can’t afford cigarettes…” I replied automatically.
We were in a
corner booth at a quaint, charming place called Koshy’s early this morning. This
place is quite popular with the locals for its English breakfast, but I noticed
how much the place looked like your typical eatery scene from the pages of an a
British novel. It was quite early in the morning and we barely beat the
church-crowd by just a few minutes to get a seat in this deli.
On this
occasion, that strong beedi smell that intruded our senses came from a few night
watchmen we just passed, catching up during their morning tea breaks. As we
made a quick arithmetic, we realized that those watchmen must be making no more
than 4000 bucks a month and probably had quite a large family to fend for. A simple
pack of cigarettes (at 200 bucks) is almost 5% of their monthly wage and it was
obviously a luxury they can’t afford. Now, I could go on giving a discourse on
the deterrent effects of a price hike or on the unintended side-effects of other
tobacco forms people resorting to. But not today. Not this morning.
This morning, what
my friend said just brought up a few questions that have been going around in
my mind:
“How much is
too much?”- What would it take to make me feel ‘Enough now, I don’t want more’?
“Why do people do
the same things every day? And how could they wake up every morning to be the
same ?”
“What would
make me do so-and-so?” and this could be anything as wide ranging as giving up something
to murdering someone. (Disclaimer: I don’t have any plans to actually do these.
Yet.)
Every time any
of these pop up in my head- oh, and they pop up randomly more often that I’d
like- they are accompanied by the song “Little boxes” (originally by Malvina
Reynolds, made popular by Walk-off-the-earth) playing in the background.
Truth be told,
I just don’t like bend in the question mark ‘?’ (Never could scribble that bend
properly by hand). That and the fact that it bugs me to not have means of
finding answers. This train of thought had just left the station when I was startled
from my reverie by the waiter bringing in my breakfast.
Perhaps it was
the rising sun seeping in through the French windows or the lack of air
conditioning on a warm, cloudless day. Or I just needed more sleep. After all,
it’s a Sunday and I should’ve been in bed at this obscene hour…
PS. If you find
the answers to these questions or other important ones like ‘how to draw the
perfect ‘?’’ or ‘how to survive a lifetime eating Maggi’ (with lead and all), do write to
me and rescue yourself from the drudgery of waking up to the same day, every
day.
-MaCh
Bangalore, 7th
June, 2015
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