Everybody else is doing it, so why can't we?

I guess most people of my age have heard the title catch phrase because of the debut album of the '90s band The Cranberries. What people don't realize is that this phrase is a catch phrase of India as a nation. Why else would everyone do things that are outright stupid and unproductive? For example:

• Why would people ride motor bikes on sidewalks, scaring the shit out of pedestrians, and feel no guilt?
• Why would people walk at a slower pass flinging their arms around without being aware of how they are being jerks by obstructing and impeding pedestrian traffic?
• Why would people out-honk each other at red lights?
• Why would people talk so loud in public transport setting so that everyone else is forced to listen to their dinner plans?
• Why do people spit out of cars in traffic-congested roads?
• Why do people push and shove each other despite realizing that it is not going to achieve what they think it would?

The only way to rationalize--yes, I'm ashamed to--is this: everyone thinks that it is okay to do all this because everybody else is doing it and; so they can and should as well. I believe such behavior starts in childhood. Why? Probably because of the lack of proper nurturing opportunities, the lack of infrastructure, poverty, the paucity of resources.

Is there a way out? Maybe in a couple of generations. When/if the present generation try to educate their offspring about what could be done differently?

Oh yes, for those who think that this happens everywhere around the world and not just in India, here's an analogy. Religious extremism happens everywhere in the world, but it is sort of more common in the Middle East. So...

Walking through the jungle

So you are walking toward your destination in a hurry. A guitar and a backpack strapped to your shoulder and back, respectively, and you are trying to make good time. You're late by ten minutes already and are on the brink of drowning in shame and guilt. And you see these kinds of people walking in front of you:

• Middle-aged women who walk slowly as if their uteruses would fall off if their perinei were stretched any further during the locomotive act - same reason why their husbands and spouses get more than adequate sleep in the night and grow obese.
• Obese men walking slowly as if they are ambulating in their parallel universe where the gullies (and phalluses) are as wide as their waist size, but in reality their shrunken organs can't penetrate the pubic bush-crown of the abovementioned class of women - the same reason why this unfortunate couple stopped making kids.
• Their kids act as if they grew on a land called Imbecilia. Sometimes they pair up and walk slowly as if they want to beat their moms and dads in cuntitude.
• And then there are hawkers, peddlers, and similar beings who forgot to scratch their balls/butt before leaving home.

All of them together create this spectacular series of pedestrian bottlenecks. The Mumbai Municipal Road Development Authority is in liaison with all of them, I think. How else could we explain the strategically placed barricades and dugouts which confuse the shit out of cunning canines and felines attempting to traverse the stretch?

This is when you feel a tad abusive and whiny. You also feel the world is being unreasonably unreasonable to you and your diabolical plans to save yourself from humiliation due to hypochronomodulation.