In the good old, bad old days when yours truly was a fully fledged member of the corporate rat race, a fellow rat had a fruity tale that he would tell with zest, zeal, and zing. It went something like this. On a high mountain far away, there lived two bulls; an old bull and a young bull. In the valley below their lofty outpost, they spotted one day a herd of lovely heifers.
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Being of a poetic turn and well acquainted with the poet Burns, the young bull gushed to his elder in breathless enthusiasm: “Say, old man, what say you we rush down the mountain, rush into the midst of the lovely lasses we see yonder, and – er, get to know one or two of them intimately – and rush back up here?” Being of a more phlegmatic nature, the wise old creature replied: “Good idea, son, but why not trot gently downhill, stroll serenely among them ladies you mention, get to know all of them one by one, and mosey on back here – all in good time… no rush, is there?” I’ve never forgotten the morale of that shaggy-bull story, and every time I see my fellow citizens rushing around like barnyard animals in a frenzy, I’m reminded that all anyone in an almighty hurry can ever come to is his senses. Or hers.
The reason for remembering this bovine parable is the state of traffic in Colombo, nay all of Sri Lanka, today. No respecters of the spirit of the Sabbath, our mad charioteers and badly brought up ox-cart drivers are having a field day in the saddening arena outside your front porch.
When one considers how our time is spent on the other days of the week, one becomes increasingly convinced that the idols we worship today are no longer Baal, Moloch, and Mammon – but Mercury. For the benefit of those who missed out on a classical education, that’s speed – not sex, power, or money. Yes, speed – and pointless rushing about hither and tither, like a headless chicken who’d OD’d on amphetamines. You do it, I do it, demon bus-drivers and decrepit bullock-cart goads do it, young men in souped up jeeps do it, little old ladies in clapped out jalopies do it, even the postman and newspaper boy and the keera kaaraya do it.
By the way, did I mention paranoid panjandrums in their high-speed convoys en route to their high-security-zone domiciles doing it, too? No need, dears, that is par for the course – as we all know well enough by now…
The point I was trying to make before this uniformed, only recently disarmed warden of the law shoved me rudely aside – so that the servants of the people we elected could whizz by in such a tizzy – was that despite all this mad rushing to and fro, pretty little seems to get done. I mean, consider what all those ant-like creatures who swarm so busily out of crowded commuter trains do when they reach their civil-service desk in some clapped out, laid-back, indolent, unfazed government office? Why, sweet butter-brinjals!
Of course, some of the users of our roads who are in such a mighty hurry to get from home to their workplace are much more efficiently employed. They are productive pen-pushers, clock-watchers, time-wasters, wool-gatherers, rubber-stampers, white-elephant mahouts, guardians of the sleeping gods, etc. Only the real professionals at running helter-skelter amidst the hurly-burly get paid overtime, directors’ fees, entertainment allowances (ad infinitum ad nauseam) though. You have to have lead a pure, clean life – and, naturally, know all the wrong kind of right people to be so favoured!
So why rush in this land of the lotus eaters? “Festina lente” (‘hasten slowly’) as the great Emperor Augustus Caesar would have said, c. 27 BC. Or if you like your axioms, apothegms, and analogies with a 21st century twist and a local flavour: “Where’s the fire, dude? Take it easy… all you can ever come to is yourself.” Unless you are a VIP, high-up among the powers that be, or one of the Lords High Pooh Bah who hold the sceptre in this isle… in which case, all you can ever come to is no good… |
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