Finding it insufferable? Blinkers on, pain gone! - Editorial contribution in today's # HT

The audacity of power, obviously!

Corruption is the grease required for the squeaking wheels of system’ is what I bagged from yet another outstanding masterpiece I watched in theatre last month. As expected, the initial hostility it faced towards its release added to my curiosity and I wrestled to book movie tickets online which, to my surprise, was much convenient than expected. As the movie ran only in late night slots, it delightfully culled out footfall of many callous and uncritical mindsets leaving the message reach only to ‘mature and non-responsive audience’. The ironical message passed on by the movie left enough fodder to contemplate its validity in today’s time. Despite of being a responsible citizen, a regular tax-payer and having high confidence and faith in country’s system, I kept pondering over the loud, clear and intriguing subject and still couldn’t come to terms with it.

Perhaps, I had subconsciously been waiting for my brush with the ‘reality’. And as the age tested goes, ‘When the student is ready, teacher will appear’, everything materialized as if destined much before. All this and here I was balancing my weight on a rickety chair, braving the heat wave, serpentine queue and commotion at a local government office in a nearby rural area. The interiors reminded me of a conservative, modest and low-key administrative structure that averted changes and reorientation outrageously. Everyone waited for the ‘babu’ and there he arrived with an open-capped pen in his hand, ready to dispense his signature wherever required, but not without the ‘summer tax’. Conversation would start with talks about the ongoing weather, move towards the agenda and wrap up with a hush-hush sweetener. Needless to say, ladies were dealt and done away with first for their lack of understanding, impractical and asocial nature!

Another one was visiting a well-renowned multi-specialty hospital in Chandigarh that caters to large number of patients daily. Despite of rolling out the online appointment facility, the hospital procedures; waiting time for turn, sample submission and reports collection from laboratories, fee submission at counters, doctor’s rude behavior and suchlike consume a fair deal of patient’s time, energy and his willingness to get healed. Though one’s heart aches observing the callous working conditions at this hospital for both staff members and the patients, but the way things start getting worked out if you ‘know someone efficient’ in the system or absence of it accentuates one’s pain even more. Rest assured, I realized how having ‘links’ at such places could get our work done in an eye’s blink!

Having had my share, of lately, I’ve come to believe that every system; good or bad, has its own leaks. Thinking positively, I feel they act more as quality control systems rather than just drains. They help in exploring the true working potential of a system that has not been contaminated with the ‘unsaid pressures’. For one, being more educated, aware, well-read, well-versed with the way things work up only makes one more aware of their existence. Though escaping unhurt, unharmed and untapped by them is literally quite impossible and hence many of us either abide by them mutely or object and let the theatrics begin.

When all is said and done, sooner or later, a layman too gives-in to those ‘unsaid pressures’, puts his blinkers on and God-speed!