My Hunger Protest!

Evano Oruvan was telecast on Sun TV last weekend. This movie is about one man’s struggle against the system. Though I have not seen the full movie, I have seen a few scenes, which have inspired me to write this post. There is one scene in the movie where the protagonist, Madhavan and his friend buy cold drinks at a shop. The shopkeeper charges them extra, the reason being, he has to pay for electricity for the fridge where he stores the cold drinks. Madhavan is irked by this and refuses to pay him extra. He also forbids his friend from doing so. Though I felt violence was totally unnecessary in this scene, I would say that Madhavan’s outburst was justified.

I am a software engineer by profession and unfortunately, most of the people whom I meet, immediately form assumptions about my salary. The worst part is, they also think that their assumptions are true. I have given up trying to convince them (the only way to convince them would be to show them my salary slip, which I am not willing to do). There is a joke that a man wants to be as rich as his child thinks him to be. I would say that I want to earn as much as others think I am earning.

My office has a food court, where I go regularly for a cup of tea (nothing like caffeine to stimulate you to stay that extra 2 hours). On days when I feel upto a snack, I prefer having American sweet corn (samosa and bajji are the only other options). Depending on the cup size, it costs Rs 20, Rs 30 and Rs 40. Me being me, I always prefer the smallest cup (hard earned money right?). From the past few days, I have been noticing a gradual decrease in the size of the cup. Presently the Rs 20 cup is designed to hold about 50-60 corn kernels (I swear I am not lying or exaggerating). The first time I bought it (after the change in the cup size), I was shocked. I told my friends about it. They had not even noticed that the cup size had changed. I reluctantly consumed it that day. Somehow the corn did not taste good to me.

I expected to see a decline in the number of sweet corn consumers in the days to come. But I was so wrong. Nobody actually seemed to mind that they were paying the same amount for a smaller quantity. If I was anywhere like Madhavan, I should have immediately demanded an explanation. But since I lack the guts to do anything of the sort (yes! I admit it), I could only protest against this in my own way-which is by not buying sweet corn from that vendor any more. If I did not do this atleast, I could not live with myself.

Sometimes, I feel, we are responsible for this situation. We have become used to seeing corruption, all around us, that we have now become oblivious to it. We prefer coughing up more money, rather than spending time to correct the situation. In the above scenario, if all the consumers had taken a joint stance against the vendor and stopped buying corn from him, he would have mended his ways. Since nobody protested, he thought nobody cared.

On a more serious note, fuel prices have been hiked again. People who are going to be affected by this hike (read lower middle class and poor people) are out on streets protesting. How many of us are going to join and support them? Is it really true that only they are going to be affected by this hike?