Friday, April 09, 2010

Good Citizens

I live in India, and more so i live in Mumbai - that has the busiest yet narrow streets. The highways are pretty decent though :-). There's a junction nearby my home, where there's no traffic signal, the cops play hide and seek occasionally, and throughout the year, there's always some construction work going on. ...... (we Indians are so creative........ if there is no work, then we Create work ;-) )

Due to all this, it gets pretty chaotic during the evenings, with all the heavy traffic. Now since this is a junction, there's a four way traffic. And since there is no traffic control, the entire traffic movement is a Luck By Chance. Today also, there was a congestion of traffic and people sitting inside their jazzy vehicles were simply honking, thinking that the more they honk, the faster traffic gets cleared.




Then, few on lookers (guess 5 of them) quickly came together, and started controlling the traffic. Within minutes there was a free flow of vehicles. No traffic jam, but a smooth flow of traffic. Well, i guess thats what we call Responsibility. Simply having the ability to respond to a given situation. I am sure out of the thousands of people present on that road at that time, many must be having thoughts like:
  • Yeah traffic toh roz ka hi natak hain. (this traffic is a everyday problem)
  • Apni government kuch nahin karti hain re. (Our government never does anything )
  • Yeah police waale bhi time pe kalti maarte hain. (Cops are never present when required)
  • Kisko padi hain?. ( Who Cares ???)
But those people who came to help must have not thought about it...........they just did one thing, and that was to Act! Taking simple responsibility, how difficult can that be? Now these five people came to help, and there were still people saying "who will listen to these guys?". But within moments everyone did. And thats how they managed to control the traffic. Everyone was then listening to them, following what they commanded. Guess its really true then, Responsibility is equal to Power.

So here came thought to me, what if every Indian or rather, if every person on this planet would take some simple responsibilities around them? We often complain about things NOT being correct or right. But if we act responsibly , i think we all can have a better place to live in :-)
But seeing those 5 people controlling the traffic made one thing clear to me.............that there are still Good Citizens around :-)