By Vijay Narayan
They screwed me. That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the long and short of it. To try and obscure the truth in a rather verbose, inscrutable manner would be an insult to your intellect. And frankly, a waste of my time. Who screwed me? To that, I really don’t have a definite answer. ‘They’ is not just a group of individuals. It happens to be a whole organization (which, by any definition, happens to be a group of people, and yet at
the same time, far from it)
the same time, far from it)
When and how did they screw with me? Again, not a definite answer . In the light of certain recent events that I shall not bore you with, I’ve come to realize that ‘they’, might just be the world in general. For the purpose of sounding cynical and rebellious, I shall just call it the system. So what is the problem with the system?
I’m sure that at some point or the other in your life, you must have wondered what’s wrong with the organization, be it a college administration, a court, a political party, or the whole government itself. And the only answer I can come up with is protocol. Protocol is the term that any person who is truly afraid of change hides behind. Seriously, you want to hide behind a bunch of rules crafted decades, perhaps even centuries ago?
Rules which (perhaps i’m exaggerating a little bit ) are designed to leave everybody unhappy. Rules which, if I may say so frankly, are a tad outdated. Look around you. In this present day and age, who IS happy with the way things are run in ANY country? Ironic ,isn’t it, since logically everything IS run by people themselves.
The problem lies in the rules. Guidelines, constitutions, academic rulebooks - call them what you want. In most cases, the rules were set probably decades ago. And people are just unwilling to change the rules, citing reasons like ‘it’s tradition’ or ‘that’s how we’ve always done it’ . Get over yourself and your precious traditions. While they may give you a sense of culture, they actually hinder your progress. The world has changed so much in the last 50 odd years. But you don’t need me to tell you that. Just ask your parents or grandparents. When the situation changes, so does the solution to it. It’s like trying to drive a car with wheels that were designed for chariots centuries ago. It just doesn’t work out.
Everybody is quick to accept the fact that change is the natural order of things. That change is evolution in its most unadulterated form. And yet, hypocrites that we are, most of us are unwilling to accept change itself. Any attempt to bring about change in the present order of things is contested strongly by many. Pray, tell me, why is that? Are we, humans, inherently flawed? We take control of a whole planet, and yet, there is something wrong. You might like to say that people just cannot change themselves, but therein lies the problem. We’re unwilling to change ourselves to accept that accepting change is the only solution to all our problems.So what do we do? Certainly, sitting on our asses doing nothing isn’t really an option.( well ok,…it is…but it’s really no fun ). I for one, shall be both bitter and cynical and shall bitch about the system, hoping that you’re reading this and actually considering making changes.
What about you?
