Sense Of Entitlement
Your father is my father, your mother – my mother, your brother – my brother, your teacher – my teacher .. but your wife is not my wife and neither is your girlfriend mine; well, depending on who you are (read: Malvika Subba’s boyfriend), I wouldn’t mind having your girlfriend as mine also but I have this funny feeling you would .. O you very much would.
You see, there’s always a line to be drawn somewhere against what’s yours and what’s mine. Your country, if you are a Nepali, is my country also. Your land, of course, is not my land and neither do I want it to be.
Or do I?
During the past week, I got to meet a few interesting people. A man – Tulsi, claimed that the house I live in along with the always paranoid tenants, was his. Why? Well, it was this guy who’d evidently laid the first brick and plastered the first slap of cement over it. Those acts of Firsts and subsequent Ns had seemingly provided him enough authority to stake some claim over the house and confuse the crap out of the tenants.
I had to literally walk Tulsi to the gate over him voicing protests about how my mother would raise a series of serious fits over my ‘agenda’ – he’d actually said the word ‘agenda’. I’d wanted to comment on his choice of word here and would’ve had, had the tenants not been keeping a close eye over this entire weirdness.
And these encroaching businesses in this city! How about BRB wearing the much-needed hat of The Demolition Man? Makes you wonder if anyone else before him knew and if so, why they didn’t crank up the CAT cranes like he has done. And if they didn’t know, why it is that they didn’t. Just because of this oversight on their part, they shouldn’t ever be allowed to serve us.
As for the flag-pole owners of decades past, they’d apparently assumed that it was just okay for them to use the land that didn’t belong to them to build parking lots and even hoist an entire bar .. as in the case of Jazz Upstairs (a fine, fine joint to spend a Friday evening) – and I heard this today so not totally sure if this is true. But if it is, Jazz Upstairs, I hope you somehow procure your लाल पुर्जाs pretty soon – I’d hate to see you go down like this.
Other ‘owners’? Writers on the walls! Nepal Bandhkaaris! The Nepali Police Force – and here’s one little tidbit on them:
I’d hailed a cab in Old Baneshwore to go to Kamaladi one fine evening. A couple of APF wallahs, near Maitidevi Chowk, had stopped the cab I was in, and had let themselves in. Ignoring me, they’d then proceeded to ask the driver to drop them off in Putali Sadak – yeah, just like that!
Fuming over their unacceptable behaviour, I’d let them have it. I’d even asked them to provide their name tags to me so that I could jot down their names and go report them to their bosses in Naxal. They’d gotten off in Dillibazaar’s ukalo, pronto.
We act like we own elements that don’t belong to us because of a perceived leeway we think we are provided by default; and most probably, due to our relation to those elements addiionally fueled by our respective professions or whatever statures we attain due to the businesses we’re in.
For instance, If you are a pedestrian, it’s like you are entitled to use the sidewalk as your own personal Open Air Urinal. If you police traffic at Tinkune Chowk, it’s like you are automatically entitled to a cup of free tea from the nearest chiya-pasal. If you are a Nepal Bandhkaari, the sights of unburned vehicles that do not belong to you, turn you on more than Rekha Thapa’s half-naked posters do. If you are a politician, all you would then need for a fettle of entitlement is – “Do you know who I am?” etc.
I’m not sure where these erroneous sense of entitlements derive from. Is it our culture? Did we grow up thinking we owned everything that we didn’t really own but now we like to assume that we do anyway?
And it’s not like there’s ever a shortage of justification, by the way. I can always say – ” But but .. I’ve run this cafe for more than 20 years right on this spot! How come no one stopped me from building it back then?” Yeah, how about that? Did you do your due diligence back then or did you perhaps overdo it (by showing up on the doorstep of the concerned haakim‘s house – at 8:00 am on a Saturday with two bhaleys swaddled across your belly)?