Where are we heading towards??

An interesting conversation with friends in Garuda Mall had made me think about a lot of things happening to me, you and a whole lot of us.

After a long time, we there got together to buy a wedding gift for one of my friends. It was a record breaking event - 3 girls managed to buy 2 gifts in a matter of 30 minutes!!! Isn't that great?? Well, at least the quickest purchase i have ever made. I go to the counter and pay the bill where the sales women tries to lure me in the usual conversation of being a member of the shop ... ahem!! paid membership. My pre-processed brain tells me that i am buying for a few thousands worth and they can't even give me a free membership. But then, i decide to push my thoughts to some remote corner and get the receipt.

I pass it on to my friend who is standing in the jewelery counter to collect the gift by showing the receipt. It is all over, the gift is neatly packed and we move. Suddenly, it strikes me that they have not put the warranty certificate (Oh yea!! If you did not know, there are warranty certificates even for jewelery.). I go back to the lady in the counter asking if they still give warranty, poor innocent ignorant me (ok, at least in this case) thought they stopped giving those certificates. Then the lady reluctantly pulls one and signs it for us.

Now, why should someone do that? Where is all the consumer friendly talk which we had while choosing the gift. The moment someone buys your product, do they become 'was a customer' whom you no longer care about?? I do not understand, i had to ask for my right. Come on!! I paid the entire bill, why am i not entitled to my right by default? Why does someone want me to fight for it?

For a while these thoughts were going on and soon i got distracted by some conversation my friends had. Then comes the real joke of the day. After this big feat, we decide to treat ourselves. I preferred juice, it was a hot summer evening. However, the real reason was mom wanted me to take only juice instead of some junk food (the obedient me pops up). We soon approached a fruit junction, it was crowded. After a while we settled on what we wanted to drink. '2 anar, 1 orange' my friend told and gave a hundred rupee note. We were surprised rather shocked to hear that 2 anar juice costs 100 and one orange was 35 bucks. Immediately walking out, we only thought of our dear ganesh fruit juice where one could get real orange juice for 7 bucks...5 times lesser. Then we voted for corn and bought one cup each.

Sitting in the sides of the mall, we were actually discussing how rapidly the purchasing power has grown. There are people waiting in the queue to buy that worthless expensive juice knowing that they are over-priced. Hmm, blessed with a IT job, anyone can buy anything without worry. But what about people who can't afford all this? Do we ever care for them, to see how they manage to live in this city where a 5'*8' area would cost around 2000 bucks a month, where tomato and potato prices change with places, malls would soon come in place of small shops?? We are slowly losing track of the value of money. Aren't we??

The long discussion covering a range of topics comes to a halt with the phone call. Time to go home - we walk to the pre-paid auto stand. There is a group of 6-7 people crowded in the booth and the person there asks everyone to stand in a line, like a teacher tells the kids while distributing chocolates. There i stand in front of a girl. Immediately i see 2 girls barge into the queue. This is not the first time this is happening to me, and as usual i get irritated, but decide not to speak as i stand third and will soon get my work done. And in another few seconds, there comes a mother who pushes her child just in front of me in the line. This is the heights, i get irritated and turn to my friend who stands beside me. Her smile asks me to keep quiet. And i silently wait for my turn.

It was disgusting to see well educated people behaving this way. If we behave like this in front of children, how can we ever expect them to be good citizens? What are we indirectly teaching our children? The queue hardly had 7 people, the mother and the other 2 girls could have waited, but they chose not to. They would not have had any guilt barging in. There are lot of people like this who are just bothered about their work and want to get it done as soon as they can. With people like me who don't even tell them that there is a queue and one is supposed to follow some rules, they happily get their job done.

I felt really bad for having kept quiet in a place where i could have made a difference. If i had told the 2 girls in the beginning, the mother would not have pushed her child. The 5 people behind me would have not waited for 2 more minutes.

We are all thought the good habits, how to behave in the society on our schools, but where is it gone? Has it all evaporated in the scorching summer? With so many questions still to be answered, here comes a huge one -- Where are we heading towards??