Sincere Apologies

Exactly a year ago, I think it was on January 2nd 2010, I had made a blog entry advocating the singing of secular songs that are musically admirable after Bhajans. It was my reasoning that even secular music issues from the Divine principle and hence singing them after Bhajans should be encouraged.

However yesterday I was shocked to read a headline in the Deccan Herald (January 16, 2011) that a "Bhajan singer killed for refusing to sing vulgar songs" as demanded by the audience. This incident is supposed to have taken place in Deoria district of Uttar Pradesh. The man's name was Jagannath and was very popular in the area. He used to be frequently invited to religious functions. He led a group which specialised in musical recitation of the Ramayana and that was what he was precisely doing on that fateful day.
As the report goes "After the programme was over, some among the audience, mainly the young ones, asked him to sing vulgar Bhojpuri songs but he refused. There were women and children also in the programme and besides Jagannath essentially was a bhajan singer. So he refused. Enraged with Jagannath's refusal, the youths allegedly thrashed him with sticks and lathis, wounding him seriously..." and so on.

It is upon reading this news that I realised how mistaken it is to associate the sacred and the profane. I can retract my action and delete that blog entry, but I let it remain as it is so that people can understand what Arnold Schwarzenegger was saying when he famously asked : "You know why opinions are like assholes - because everyone has one!"

Lack of Knowledge and its effects

The other day I parked my mobike at the Jayanagar Shopping Complex stand and struck a conversation with the contractor who had leased out the space for parking of scooters and motorcycles from the BBMP (Bangalore Corporation). He told me that the parking rates had been hiked from Rs.2 to Rs. 3 for a period of three hours. Before I paid up the sum demanded I decided to make some discreet enquiries from him. As we conversed on he unwittingly came to give me some bits of information that were harmful for him to reveal.

It appears the BBMP periodically checks up to compile statistics, how many people on an average park their vehicles at these places, on the hand-held electronic ticket-issuing contraption provided to them. Based on these statistics they assign the rates of collection per vehicle and thence, in turn, the leasing rates for awarding the contracts to these contractors. It was only when I heard this bit of news that I realised how important it was for every person to collect the parking ticket from the hand-held ticket issuing machine, because if you fail to do it, the contractors claim that the number of clients using these parking areas is much lesser and consequently ask the rates for parking charges to be enhanced. Further they use these statistics to bargain for a lower minimum rate of lease.

When I realised this and hence chose to demand for a printed receipt from the device, he told me that in such a case I have to pay up Rs.4/-  So what these contractors are doing is that they are letting off one rupee to collect an unaccounted amount of three rupees that serves him not only to avoid tax, but also gets him a greater factual support to bargain for higher parking rates and a lower leasing rate.

However, it is true that if everyone chose to demand for tickets people would have to wait considerably longer and no one seems to have a patience for this. But by cutting corners we are only harming ourselves and then we protest vehemently when the country is being ripped-off by huge scams and wonder why India is getting to be like this! All that is needed is more awareness, more patience and shunning of laziness.