Showroom Dummies

Ferraris are red, Lamborghinis are orange, sex is worth the wait, and jeans are blue. It cannot be another way.

Jeans can be black, as proven by a pair I bought a while ago, but they’re a bit dive bar-ish, and hence, an obvious misfit on my large-ish legs. But essentially, jeans are blue.

With time, however, I have come to terms with the omnipresent difference in ‘taste’. So while I frown at Justin Bible, or so I suppose his name is, I know a dozen odd girls who are willing to give him all their money and beauty products.

Continuing, all birds are ridiculous, gold is hateful, and astrology is the science of telling lies. It is ridiculous, to ‘know, plan and be prepared’ for strange consequences in the offing, by chalking out arrows on an unfathomable galactic route map.

Yet, I have noted that prediction, by the way of astrology or not, is a natural instinct. It was pointed out to me a few days ago, that my natural instincts have failed me consistently, and that I am an assumptive, opinionated asshole. I’d said Germany would march home with the FIFA ’10 World Cup, but they lost out in a match which was the equivalent of brown bread. Dull, and utterly tasteless.

Mercedes GP is but a speck in the F1 circus. Chitrangada Singh is far from appearing naked on a Filmfare cover. Jitesh Pilaai is still alive, and both, the Nano and the Beat are selling in good numbers. Mobile network service providers are not yet bleeding jail-birds, and the use of laptops (and the internet) across the country, is still legal.

But here, the issue is more about common sense, than it is about ethics, or preferences. We live in an ethically dumbfounded country. We say ‘x’ is ethical, and ‘y’ is not. And then sustain a market where x, y, and even z are sold freely. Ethics, by nature, are solely dependent on the ethical framework used to determine it. Common sense, by that standard, is far less complicated.

Walk into a medical store, and you wouldn’t walk out with a bottle of cough syrup unless you produced a prescription, or held the store on gunpoint. But buying alcohol is far simpler. You simply hand over the money to the store-keeper, and return home to drown in your joy or sorrow, whichever applicable.

I’m not rising to the defence of the 490 students recently detained in a party in Pune. No, I couldn’t care less about them. They were at fault, even if of a lesser magnitude than they were projected to be, and they’re a waste of my afternoon.

But the dubiousness with which the entire issue was handled gets to me. A 21 year old can vote, marry and reproduce. But a pint of beer makes him/her a criminal. That’s like saying you can have a Ferrari, but you can’t run it on all eight cylinders. If you do so, you are irresponsible, and deserve to have your face peeled off with a bulldozer.

A vote is the individual’s aspiration to freedom and independence, no strings attached. But if the same vote then counters his aspirations, and lands him in detention, that’s flawed, alright.

We call ourselves ‘The Largest Democracy in the World’, and we’re about to commence our 64th year of independence. But being the largest hardly makes us the best. I mean, Paul the Octopus has six more legs than Usain Bolt, but that’s not going to make it the Fastest Man in the World, right?