What ails us?

Today I was on my way to a 'halwai' to get some sweets for Dusshera. Today also happened to be a day when the Common Wealth Games rally was in full swing in Pune. That meant the roads were full of policemen to oversee that nothing untoward happens to the good citizens of Pune. At such events I always wonder from where do all these police personnel materialise from..but I digress.

So here I was waiting at the traffic signal as any good law abiding citizens are wont to do, when a bike rider alongside lost patience seeing the vacant road and went ahead to wait at the next signal about 20 meters ahead. His action was observed by a traffic policeman, who went to that rider and started pointing out his mistake. The policeman happened to be new recruit and the biker observing his raw status started answering back. Observing the argument, a relatively senior policeman nearby came over and on understanding the reason behind the argument asked his junior to move back to his post. And the rider was let off even though he did not obey the traffic signal. As a result of this I saw the junior was walking back to his post, his back stiff with outrage. The look on his face showed his confusion as to why his senior let-off the rider when the rider was obviously at fault. The fallout of this was immediately apparent. The wait at that particular traffic signal is a long one and after that incident I saw more riders go through the red signal and the junior cop made no attempts to enforce the signal.

This incident got me thinking that is this what ails us. We pride ourselves on being patient but then why do we take the easy way out..why do we discourage someone trying to do his job...why do we do it everyday ourselves...why do we set this as an example for everybody or worse the next generation...our children.