Delhi Bikers

Here’s the bottom line right on top: You think the prize you will get is free, but it is not.  It will cost you your time, energy and most likely, your credibility. In the last couple of years, the frequency with which virtual vote gathering has taken off is phenomenal. You are promised a ‘title’ that proves you are a ‘better biker’ than all the other bikers in the country. It seems highly pretentious until you remember we are in Delhi where titles matter. A lot.   The irony is that most of us are so focused on scoring our own prizes that no one is really paying attention to others' prize.  If we did, we may see the absurdity of winning based on our ability to garner enough votes. But who cares as long as we get our 15 seconds of fame and couple of hundred ‘congrats’, ‘likes’ and ‘shares’. Usually from the same constituency who voted us in. At the end of your vote harvesting, you may also get a fancy certificate, photo-op and vouchers for your passi...

A trigger-happy cop shoots a boy for ‘stunting’. Never mind that he was sitting behind the one actually riding. The boy is cremated and everyone goes on a finger pointing frenzy. To downplay their incompetence, the officials declare war on such adrenaline junkies. No apology, no regrets. Not even a “…keeping the recent tragedy in mind, we wish to remind our fellow citizens to mend their evil ways…” What we get instead is the same cold bureaucratic nonsense typical of those who have lost touch with the youth of our nation. ‘Public servants’ who have let the law beat the living daylights out of whatever compassion and concern they may have felt at some point in their career. Now they studio-hop dumping opinions about people they last had a normal conversation with in their college years.  Eventually their hired PR agency comes to the rescue with a ‘humane’ script.  “The heartless comments were from the heart, now lets get politically correct” ...