A Visionary.

I'm reading Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht. It's an impressive play and one of Brecht's finest. He writes brilliant dialogue. Eg - "'Let's you and me go fishing,' said the angler to the worm." Killer, no? That's my quote of the day! Anyway, you should read Brecht.

So there was this line that sort of got me thinking. Somewhere in Act 1 Scene 2/3 Mother Courage says "Whenever there's a load of special virtues around it means something stinks. ...In decent countries folks don't have to have virtues, the whole lot can be perfectly ordinary, average intelligence, and for all I know cowards."

Think about it. There's definitely some truth to what Brecht is saying thru the voice of Courage. I sort of gave it some thought. Now lets see how true or false it is. Take the United States for example. We're lead to believe (and it probably is true) that an average American is not as smart as an average Indian. Ever wondered why? It can't be just genes, can it? Now read the quote again. We all know for a fact that an average American leads a much more decent life than an average Indian. They've better standard of living, more safety, security, life expectancy etc. We don't . We've to fight to survive at almost every level. Starting from good grades in school, entrance exams, 'tough' college life, land a decent/high paying job, get a pretty girl etc. Not like they don't have to do these things. They don't give all of these so much importance. If they could re-elect Bush a few years back, they certainly were very happy and comfortable. Plus they aren't sharing their country with 1/6th of the world's population to worry about survival! Which means something stinks in India. Ofcourse. Everything and everyone here stinks.

Or used to. Now we all use deodorants. And all of us have mobile phones. We lead happy lives. Kalam's vision 2020 doesn't seem too unreal now. We're on our way to becoming economic super powers! Isn't that cool?

We'll be leading decent lives then. Happy all around. Our kids will goto good schools. We'll eat good food. And sleep peacefully.

India will be ordinary.

It'll take another fifty years to get to that point if everything goes well. I'm saying all this right now so that some idiot might stumble across my blog 50 years from now, read this post and call me a visionary and make me a hero. I'd be dead by then. They'll hunt for my photo all around, find it on some corner of the internet and build an e-statue for me.

This is my investment for my fifteen minutes of fame in the future. Here, let me repeat it for all those dolts out there - You are ordinary. You're not even half as smart as me. And I knew this fifty years back. I am awesome. Kiss my virtual ass. Okay, enough kissing. Go spread my fame now. Oh wait. I knew you'd be an idiot. That's why I never liked you.