Cluster-o-phobia!

Cluster-o-phobia* : The fear of, well, clusters. Clusters of people. Mainly people with some mischief, vengeance or hate in mind, body or soul. Quite correctly, the permutations and combinations are clearly way beyond finger-counting. So in all probability, let it be at clusters of people, a general assumption at that.

In every national daily, every day in a week of frenzy and constant development of this story, sits pretty the same report. Gujjars v/s Meenas.

Today, a young man was driving his mother along the busy by-lanes of a local shopping street. Too lazy to accompany her, he parked nearby and asked her to finish off her routine window-shopping wander in haste, the heat being extremely subduing. The radio on, his mind carelessly wandering, he noticed from the corner of his eye a group of six-to-ten men, unarmed, yet seemingly dangerous. He immediately missed a call, gave a missed-call rather to his mother, who was hardly aware of the ghastly happenings only a few feet away. He told her to expedite. "I don't know why, but even though they looked like an ordinary sub-set of the Indian male sample space, a part of me was involuntarily fearful, quite contrary to the Gaussian distribution of the probability of invoking fear in a person on witnessing a group of men, which states that a minimum of a rowdy mob is required for the purpose." The young man had clearly had either too much to drink, or spent too much free-time on wikipedia, or his mind was window-shop-wandering at the most horrible of places. Needless to say, he needed to get a life. Yet, he acted true to his instinct. Whether it was worth it or not, he escaped the heat, which was a much more of a relief than the stay of the OBC quota bill, in his own words. Little did he know, however, that it was a Gujjar get-together, publicly voicing their stand and exercising peaceful protest.

"This involuntary fearfulness", our expert psychiatrist relates to us, "is the growing trend of 'Clusterophobia' ". This damned ailment of the Indian psyche is extremely widespread, although not contagious. It's strange symptoms are that of tension, hypertension, constant fear and acting completely shell-shocked on seeing a group of more than five men together. The worst of cases might also consist of severe schizophrenia where the patient has delusions of a crowd constantly around. "The reasons could be many. The press, for one, does nobody any good by constant exaggeration of facts and misrepresentation of reports of crimes.", finishes (thankfully) the expert. The public seem to have a better idea of things, we found out, as the latest SMS poll was conducted on the subject. "TV is biggest culprit", "The police are like sitting ducks", "I love John Cena", "I need help", "Thr s a cnstnt fear englfn us n dat s nt a gud sign fr d cntry", "Nethn is pssbel", "V hav 2 b prepard 4 d wrst", "We have too much corruption and poverty" were some of the best of the lot. Ladies and gentlemen, kindly avoid the expressions of 'tru luv' in times of national crises such as these.

As prevention measures, it is advised that one should stay away from crowds, lock him/herself at home and order free home delivery. Use the internet for your work and shopping and the telephone for communication. Suffer, instead, from claustrophobia.

* You're right, you literary geeks, you! It is the official Oxford dictionary opposite of claustrophobia.

The Greeting Card Gentry

I stand in front of the stacks of birthday cards, selecting the 'most appropriate' one for the occasion and purpose*. After going through with the mental ordeal, I stand in line to cash out my singular simple little brithday wish. Priceless.

To my utmost shock and surprise, it cost me a whoppingly meagre twenty-five bucks! Aww, man. My Birthday wish is worth twenty-five blood-sucking smackaroos? Damn! Why in the world don't they write the god-forsaken MRP on the card? Every other thing thronging the unholy aisles of retail stores and gift shops alike do a seemingly small but heartily selfless favour of carrying a simple little price-tag, saving us from falling from grace, as I have now. No, no, no, I think to myself, the relationship is deep. It deserves a minimum of fifty, no hundred .. Okay, chill .. Seventy-five bucks worth of effort. This is outrageous. This just can't be. I pay the twenty-five and force my way out of hell.

The explanation. There was only one force against me in this decision. My own conscience; the onus of protecting and celebrating the relationship, that I honestly cherish, lying on it. What is the relationship really worth? Of the scale of one-to-ten, how much INR** is each unit worth? The rupee is appreciating against the dollar, by all means. No doubt about that. So if there is an international standard that I clearly don't know of, do I benefit now by paying less INR? But then again, there was only one force within, still standing by me. The one which these EQ tests make fun of; and newspaper supplements thrive on. Have I, like, learned nothing from Tulsi and Parvati? How dare I put a price on the sacrosanct bonds of a genuine relationship? How dare I consciously think of a bond's worth? After all, I have selected a suitable card myself; how dare I track back on natural selection? What right do I have to judge how far a relationship has gone, or is capable of going? Why has my unconscious gone so quiet? Should I resign from worldly life and meditate for revival of my true senses? Rather, have I become completely capitalist in a mixed economy, once briefly being slave to liberal tendencies?

As these two true-type forces started to collide, I paused for a moment to look at the bigger picture here. This battle of mine is too trivial. There is a bigger war we're all a part of, a greater meaning engulfing our every action. The war waging on for ages between Grand Master Money and Grand Master Emotion. Money has been renowned to have telling upper-cuts and under-currents to deal the death-blows to Emotion on many an occasion, especially recently. This great battle, of which I find myself a part, has the Greeting-Card gentry handling the left wing of Emotion's blood red-flagged army. Money's black suit-flanked green army has engulfed the teddy-bears and have even bribed some of the other enemy soldiers at MRP to march to their newly found homes and not participate. Now the Greeting Card wing has devised a guerilla tactic to confuse Money. They have removed all traces of MRP from their bodies by some recent advancement of technology. Money is now utterly helpless, having hardly any battle strength or combat expertise. But then, suddenly, there was an unusual and abnormal arrangement of stars and planets, such that a time-warp was created. The battle had to be finished in haste; and the warring soldiers had to escape the unknown dimension through the Gate of Transaction. Money used his power in numbers and forced it's way through the Gate and pushed Emotion out of it's way, heavily outnumbered by this time. Hence, Emotion, trapped for eternity within the unknown dimension had no option but to wait for the next battle. His army is reportedly recuperating, but the progress is sluggish. Money is said to rejoicing and celebrating the debatably deserved victory.

So, I, owing to paucity of time to think, rethink, imagine or consult my inner/outer/peripheral self, pay the twenty-five and force my way out of hell.

* The occasion and the purpose, both, not relevant to be disclosed here.

** Indian Rupees.