Fire

It was an innocuous Thursday evening. Schools and colleges were closed for Christmas vacations, people in corporate jobs were on their year- end leave. A nice time to have a quiet celebration. 

Parel in Mumbai was once upon a time a hub of flourishing activity with quite a few textile mills situated there. However the textile mill strikein the 1980s  ensured that most of the mills never opened. Slowly the mills were sold and Corporate Offices and Shopping Malls started coming up in these mill compounds. Lower Parel regained its status as a hub of economic activity in Mumbai. Most Television Studios are located here. Quite a few Corporates have their head office here. It is but natural that the locality also morphs into a party hub. After all people working more than ten hours a day need to let their hair down. A whole lot of fine dining restaurant and bars have mushroomed in the area. Being centrally located, it ensures a decent footfall.

Communist ideology which once flourished in these mills has given way to crass capitalism.

However 28^th December wasn’t another Thursday. A few minutes past the hour when the dates change, there was a spark. Suddenly one of the restaurants caught fire, and spread. Fourteen innocent lives were lost, mostly women.

The standard blame game has started. Corrupt municipal officials, politicians, fire department the promoters of the restaurant have been blamed. Some people will be arrested, some will be suspended and after a few days everything will be forgotten.

I personally think it is we as a society who is to blame. When I say we, it means you and me. We patronize corruption, right from childhood. On a daily basis I see a lot of people driving on the wrong side of the road. These are educated people and the vehicle ranges from a motorbike to auto to even a car. The perpetrators of the offence (in their minds it does not qualify as one) range from teenagers, middle-aged women, to even senior citizens. We have scant respect for the rules. Many times I have stopped people and admonished them, only to get varied reactions. Some are sheepish and apologise, but a majority respond arrogantly with “Mind your own Business.”If a father takes his child on a bike on the wrong side of the road, the child never realises that it is wrong. Now if this person meets with an accident, we will always blame the bigger car, and the police for not doing its duty. We sympathise with the aggrieved person even if he / she is wrong

Similarly I see people littering on the road, when dustbins are nearby. I have seen people who are in senior positions in corporates, throw the soft drink can out of the running car, throw the toll receipt at the toll station itself. In spite of strict enforcement on drunken driving, we still have people who drink and drive. Those who refrain from driving after a drink only do so out of fear and not out of concern for fellow drivers or passers by.

I have seen people disappear during fire drills in corporate offices. It is considered a colossal waste of time. I have rarely seen a fire alarm taken seriously. People don’t even stir when the alarm rings. I wonder whether they even recognise the sound of the fire alarm.

You will ask, how is all of  this connected to the fire. It is part of a larger malaise. We simply don’t follow rules. We take pride in boasting about how we have bent the rules. How can children who have grown up seeing their parents break the rules, be expected to follow the rules.

Tomorrow when our children grow up and are setting up an office or a restaurant and the department throws them the rule book, they will throw it back with a wad of notes. Because rules are meant to be... bent, broken, twisted – but not followed.

Today as we get into the new year, let us take a pledge – to follow the rules, not bribe officials, pay our taxes, not litter on the roads, stop jumping red lights even when no one is watching. Let us take the pledge to be a model citizen... so that we leave this country as a better place for our children. Let us stoke the fire of compliance within ourselves. We need to make the beginning ourselves. Charity after all begins at home.