Patience is the new life

I'm tired of reading about swine flu and recession. I'm sick of watching the stock markets rise and fall at its will. I'm tired of computers and mobile phones and wish they weren't invented at all. I'm beginning to understand that the problem with the world is two much information in too little time.

I loved the days when I used to call my father at his office phone (phone only meant landline at that time) from my neighbour's telephone. Now I keep track of my loved ones every minute.... sometimes hand phones seem like a pest always itching...I loved the days when I stood for hours at queues in railway station only to learn that tickets were full..... There is nothing like that now.... I check them online and if the tickets are full, there is Tatkal or Flight or .... the alternatives are endless. I remember when my father and I went to theatres every Sunday to buy tickets of the film 'Jeans' a great hit at that time. We succeeded at the twelfth attempt, that too after the film was already 100 days old.... Do I have to explain what we do now?

With these new developments in place, our impatience levels are so high that we can't even wait for the computer to navigate from one screen to another. The new Airtel Broadband's caption reads "Impatience is the new life', as it were not already.

My great grandfather would have been more patient than my grandfather, my granddad more patient than my father and my father more than me. Do I have to talk about the next generation? They don't wait in queues, they don't sweat for a second, they don't have a sibling to share anything with (parents try to pamper one kid lavishly with all their riches these days).

Disappointment and impatience have found new results - crimes! Children kill, commit suicides due to impatience and disappointments as stupid as getting 94.4, when the cut-off was 94.5 as less as 0.1 less than what was wanted.

Sometimes disappointments are essential in life. Getting all what you want is luxury. My father did not have an engineering degree, my grandfather did not even visit school. There was nothing in plenty available for me but the real happiness was the contentment with which you lived. Now-a-days I've only begun to compare myself with the have nots. No, I'm not even suggesting having cars or laptops. Just consider these for a moment:

I see the two bottles of clean water kept at my desk even before I reach office - 'what about people who live in places where they are asked to stand in long queues to drink a mouthful of water'.

I eat at a new restaurant every weekend just to try new flavours, while right in the backyard of my office women and children swelter in the heat, I'm sure they would thank their lucky gods if they ate once a day.

I rush out from my air-conditioned office in the afternoon and run to the nearest shade. There is a boy outside my office, barely 17, handing out pamphlets he can't even read. The pamphlets I take from his hand are wet with his afternoon sweat.

And here are my leaders talking about empowerment of backward people. Which backward people do they mean, if it did not include persons I just mentioned.

When I spoke to my friend about this she asked me "Are you feeling bad for what you can have and enjoy just because someone else is not lucky as you? Don't feel guilty for being happy!"

Valid point, I must agree....

But lets not feel guilty for being happy, but we sure can stop getting disappointed because your fun tour got cancelled or be a little patient while the computer takes a few milli seconds longer to pull out that information.