Mango Man

As a mango man of a banana republic I have no much choice in my entertainment. My financial constraints have forced me to take up reading to my grandchildren the stories that kept me company in my younger days almost sixty years ago. Over these many years the raw mango man has become a ripe mango man. Plenty of time I have at disposal to ruminate over what I read with my grandchildren. The tale of “Tale of two cities” is the one currently running. The backdrop of the story is the gradually erupting French revolution of the 1780s.The king and nobles of France had become completely insensitive to the suffering of the poor.

The wine cask falling down with a crash spilling red wine on the streets, children trying to get handful of wine in their tiny arms, grownups getting a part of the same by whatever means like soaking pieces of dry and soiled cloth in the puddle of wine and then squeezing them back into bottles for consumption at leisure reminded me of a scene when a milk van was drained on the road in a part of our country, as protest against the inadequate price of milk. The subsequent scene was similar . Children licked it directly , elders collected in cans or bottles midst utter chaos. Yet there was a difference in the two scenes. In France it was the lowest of the low who collected the wine but in India one could see even people who were not really below the poverty line. In France it was for wine, not necessarily a necessity. In India it was for milk, a must for any growing child. Are we not worse off than France of the time of revolution? However , there is a striking similarity too. In both places. The rulers had become totally insensitive. They became selfish and arrogant. Anarchy is bound to set in fast under these conditions. If a flow of wine can turn to a flow of blood as happened in France, can a flow of milk too not turn to a flow of blood in India midst an ever growing anger against the callousness of the ruling class and its total disregard to the suffering of poor.

Let none try to mutate a sweet mango man to a sour mango one!

The above has been written by Dr. T. N. Vasudevan for Silicon India