The bold and the pitiful

Swami Gulagulaananda said:
"Not that I intend to sound like a wife; But here are the eight principles of life"

Today was a very interesting day. I wanted to beat the morning traffic and reach office before time. So, I set out a little early. And reached the ring road, which has been recently laid - The broad road is fairly straight, and a road on which you can technically zoom past. Note that the word technically has been made bold, for I forgot to mention, that I am talking about a road in Bangalore...

So, I was riding till I reached a major traffic jam. And this is a traffic jam that would have been logically unheard of. But well, where the hell is logic? This is just a pictorial representation of how the traffic jam was.

It was incredibly ridiculous. For multiple reasons. One, the people who are in red, are complete buffoons, for not only have they somehow managed to get their line completely jammed, they have come into the blue area and have jammed up that area as well. Two, after actually messing this up, they have the audacity to yell at the people who are driving in the correct path, asking them to watch where they were going. The cheek!! I was actually curious, and asked one guy how he managed to come so much into the wrong area. He said, "I don't know Sir, everyone seemed to be coming this way, so I also." The best part (sarcasm alert) is that instead of traffic policemen trying to resolve the issue, we had cheeky autodrivers! Haha, I mean, that is like trying to learn the law from criminals, or asking a beggar for a loan. How pathetic it was, for these talented auto-drivers introduced a new direction of traffic - the horizontal, which pretty much ensured that it could not be resolved any time soon. Most of us had shut off the engines. The other two wheelers were actually climbing over my foot, and giving sheepish looks when I gave an angry glare at them.

Then it happened - A bus driver from the blue area, decided to take initiative, and yelling loudly drove ahead. All the smaller vehicles hurriedly scurried away from his path. The scene reminded me of a scene from National Geographic Channel, where a huge tusker is moving madly ahead, charging, while smaller animals like rabbits and foxes run for cover so as to not get trampled under the feet of the charging mammoth. The auto-drivers, skunks, felt offended, for the bus driver paid no heed to their hair-brained schemes to resolve the issue, and loudly started yelling out swear words of the worst kind. We coolly followed the bus and came out of it. It was miserable.

However, it taught us some interesting points.

1. People do stuff blindly, just because someone else did it, without assessing the righteousness aspect of it.
   
2. People don't use righteousness, and simply start off with the "fact" that they are right and others are wrong, and so though they are wrong, continue to argue.
   
3. Foolish people who cannot do things right themselves become leaders trying to guide others.
   
4. More foolish people actually follow their lead.
   
5. Everyone thinks about himself, and wants to go ahead, without following order. Since everyone believes in this, and nobody wants to lose, it leads to a vicious cycle.
   
6. Might is right, and the stronger person will eventually arise as the winner.
   
7. People who follow the strongest and the winner will eventually get out of the mess.
   
8. Since the country is full of such people, you get out of one mess to get stuck in another one pretty soon

Now that we are aware of these problems, we hope that each of us will take steps to fix ourselves, thereby fixing a part of the problem.