Stupidity

I enjoy watching TV- well, not the news or documentaries, but any random sitcom that airs on Star World or Zee Cafe. As far as my memory goes, the only thing that compelled me to tune into a news channel was the 26th Nov attacks..... and my era of watching live news began.

I wouldn't say that I love reading the news- yeah, the only discovery that was made recently was a deadly virus- swine flu. An elderly lady had been stabbed to death in her own house, that too in broad daylight, and there was a constant war of words between Indian, American and Pakistani ministers. Where did all the good things in life vanish???

Even news can be so depressing - talk about bitter truth.

Anyways, I few days back I managed to wake up early and get my hands on the newspaper before anyone else in the house could. I went straight to Mumbai Mirror- not for the news , duh. I wanted to check out some gadget deals.

However, my eyes instantly fell on the frontpage of the mirror. HORROR!!! 'Man dupes people of 50 lakh rupees by claiming to be Gandhi's close aide'. Along with the article was a Times of India paper clipping dated August 1945, which had been modified by the 'Computer Engineer' conman using a pirated version of the Photoshop. It showed the 29 year old man casually putting his arm around the neck of the 1869 born Father of the nation and posing for the camera for an election campaign. More so, he even had a picture with the head of the Indian National Army -Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former."
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

This quote from another great man from the same period of the above 2 leaders clearly compares the phenomenon (guess thats the right word) with the vastness of the infinite universe.

62 years have passed since our independance, and still we dont have the slightest idea about the people who have fought for our current status. Well, everything else aside, people have become so blind that they cannot spot a simple date on the newspaper clipping that is shown to them?

We all have seen an episode or 2 of a show on channel V known as V I.Q or General Knowledge, where the awareness of the average Indian is comically displayed to the national audience. People are singing Vande Mataram as the national anthem, calling the dodo our national animal/ bird (yeah that a confusion too ...), and apparently no one seems to know who is Dr. Manmohan Singh or Prathibha Patil. Taj Mahal was build by DLF, and Qutub minar is in Kanyakumari.Red fort is actually grey, and Tamil is same as Telegu.

Sure, everyone knows SRK, Sachin, Hrithik and ofcourse AB (maybe bcoz they have more visibility.... but that doesnt mean that the Indians have a short term memory loss problem)

To be honest, the awareness of the average Indian is not more than the people who were sitting in the Kodak Theatre and rose to a rhythmic 'Om mangalam' in a recent bollywood masala flick.
Well agreed- in a country of 1.2 Billion citizens of various faiths, cultures, and backgrounds there might be a little bit of cognitive overload, but everyone is expected to know that A.R Rahman is not the original writer and composer of the national song.


Lets take the occassion of the upcoming Independance Day (15th August by the way) and learn something about our country.