The chimera

Today morning, when my friend and I alighted the bus on reaching the company, we both were feeling a bit low. Currently my friend has got loads of work for now, and I have got none . I may be assigned helluva work anytime now . That’s the way IT industry works – one moment u r thinking of ways to pass ur time and suddenly u can find yourself with heaps of work.
Coming back to the main point, we both were feeling low because our routines have become so monotonous. The day starts at 7:00 in the morning, then have a quick bath, get ready, rush to catch the bus, if the radio is not on, tune in to some radio station on ur mobile, take breakfast at the office. Then in office if you have got work, slog at it else find innovative ways to kill time. Get back home..nd the cycle continues…
Thinking all this, a thought struck us : what if we were stiil living 70-80 yrs back in time. Firstly, there won’t be this tension of deadlines, no hard and fast rules to get to office. No tension about having healthy food or organic food. The mantra would be to work hard, eat a lot – the food would be s’thin like makki ki roti, daal, chach, lots of butter etc.. In free time go to chaupal (a place in villages where all the people who are done with their day’s work meet, play cards, have hukka etc. All in all, it was a thought of complete bucolic life. We thought that it would be great, without any tensions.
But hey, wait..did we consider all the people…the main work would be agriculture…so what about small and marginal farmers. They must have s’thin to save them selves from clutches of moneylenders, a practice from which we are still trying to get rid of – remember all these suicides in vidarbha region. So in the first place, why did a class of moneylenders came into existence? The answer is simple: Man’s greed. One of the oldest sayings is that ‘man’s greeds has no ends’. And then question arises : what causes this greed ? obviously money.
So can we think of a society without money? But then how will people get what all they want? Barter system?? Not really, this will just be replacing money with goods and settiing prices in terms of goods. So the only change would be that instead of accumulating money and other riches(silver gold etc), people would become greedy even for these essential commodities like foodgrains and start accumulating them. So can’t there be a society free from greed? Well, there can be one but it is possible only if there is a change in the inherent thinking of people. This change will include changing ‘me’ to ‘us’, selfishness to selflessness, my family to all the people in the world and so so on. In this system people will do different jobs and will give(not exchange) goods and services gratis. There would be no preferential treatment for loved ones or even to members of own company. The society would be guided by ‘vasudev ktumbkam’ i.e all the world is your family.
We both were in a queue at food court while discussing all this.Just as I was adding more to the above line of thought, my friend interrupted me ‘ oye counter aa gaya’a nd I felt as if I had been woken up from dream.
I know that all theses thoughts are nothing more than just chimera. But then who stopped you from dreaming !

B/w I got a mail with some terrific pics of India in older days. So I will post some of these pictures here:-