Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? Well, this question is hardly fair considering that with our rapidly increasing population, one might very well confuse a mirror for another person and vice versa. Although it is not so much the gigantic number of clumsy hands or noisy feet or even greasy noses that bother me, it is the eyes. Gloomy, distrustful eyes, sneaking glances in your direction at every step while you are oblivious to the same, they leave you quite naked, well not quite literally. The only saving grace is that we don’t live in China, so at the very least we are not confusing our husbands with the creepy neighbour who walks around in his underwear.
Maybe it is just the lack of protection or maybe it is just the lack of self-restraint to wait for protection. Whatever it is, the number of bald heads on the road are simply too many to stop yourself from smacking one of them and then conveniently disappearing into the million other bald heads floating around. Population explosion, they call it. Population retardation is more like it, considering the degradation in grey cells. It is almost as if the total smartness of the country redistributed itself to placate everyone and as a result, left most people in a not-so-smart state. I can only cringe when I go back to the potential contributors to the lot: Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, Miss Rakhi Sawant, and need I mention more? Although it is inspiring- the way people stop at nothing. They keep going for the jackpot and keep spewing out more and more kids. I must say that their perseverance is quite admirable.
Someone great once said, ‘When the world sleeps, India will awake’. Sincere as we are, I believe we took that quite literally. Night is after all the most productive time of the day. Some people think religion is the opium of the masses. I would, on the contrary, say that opium is the opium of the masses and opium does contribute its fair share to the population overdose, resulting in the several cases of opium overdose.
All these copies of DNA are being squeezed into a tiny, filthy hole in the middle of the universe, our quaint little home known as the earth. Now these millions of people are going to increase the competition in every field that exists and as we know, human invasion is almost as bad as an alien one. This means more necessity to make small talk with random people we do not really care about, more blonde-heads to educate and more sardar jokes to crack (without intending to hurt the sentiments of the community).
On a slightly more serious note, increased illiteracy, more malnourished children on the roads, more demand-less supply, higher level of tension, an increase in the need to resort to external pleasures, less per capita income, less money to spend on seemingly insignificant requirements such as contraceptives and thus, lo-and-behold, more population. It is quite a vicious cycle you see. A very popular quote of regret, ‘if only I’d left the lights on, I’d be somewhere else altogether.’ Our only hope now is to light up our lives, or should I say nights?