Freedom or Starvation

Life indeed is weird and wonderful. Man may have understood a lot about life and for hundreds of years have written quite a bit about it but no one has left any enough description of it. For e.g. there are these streets of Mumbai with detailed maps but no one has ever charted our enthusiasm. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?

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Our society consist of two classes – those who govern and those who are governed. Those who have brains, for some funny reason do not get into the class that governs. Those lacking the capacity to think, governs the latter. Otherwise I have no way of expressing my misery and repulsion when I learned that there would be a separate Gym constructed for the MLAs and MLCs at a cost of Rs 200-300 crores! (Tax money of course, silly!)

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Freedom or Starvation
I am more than often reminded of a famous quote by Jean Jacques Rousseau: “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains” I cannot find anything much truer than this statement. It moves me from inside. How true it is, even in today’s world. We gave up slavery with the Yankees winning the American Civil War in 1865. We abolished monarchy when Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793. But in our present democratic world I have this awkward feeling as if I exist in a zoo, like an animal. The animal in a zoo is captive. The animal’s compound may be big and his surrounding and environment may replicate his natural state. But for all purpose, he is a captive. He cannot seek his own providence. He is not at liberty to lead the life for which he slipped into this world.

I feel that though there is this supposedly and self-styled democracy, I live like that animal in a sort of national zoo. I am the captive of a state planned economy. My compound is my country. I cannot leave it, except to upgrade my financial conditions. I am rationed and heavily regulated and I have to endure the restrictions, restrains and constraints which the authorities impose – since the alternative is to starve.

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