3000 kilometers, a wedding, and stray thoughts

1. The Unwashed Indian Middle Class - If you are really interested in finding out why Indians are stuck in the rut, travel by trains. We just love to litter our trains, we have utter disregard for public places and our behaviour is nothing short of contemptuous towards our fellow human beings. This propensity for squalor, to wallow and spread filth like swines, cuts across boundary of any demography. Language, region even education is no exception (although I like to think that South fares better, but I don't know enough). The obvious conclusion of this is what we get are degrees and not education, that our situation is expected, indeed it would have been a surprise if it was better.
(Don't tell me I am stereotyping. I have travelled enough in trains to form opinion)

2. Loss of a friend - Attending R's marriage I had mixed feeling. I think one should feel happy for friend, but I can only feel pity for myself (yes I am selfish). With every marriage, my circle keeps getting smaller. It is a loss, for the friendship forged in loneliness of bachelorhood, hundreds of miles aways from home is what makes life worth living, otherwise after a point this loneliness begins to gnaw at innards, suck any meaning behind living. After marriage these bonds of transit melt away, a bond to last a lifetime taking place of camaraderie. The unstated but nevertheless understood comfort is replaced by formality, that too is swept aside by tides of time.

3. Meaning of marriage - Besides providing a stable environment for one's child that is. I doubt marriage is as much about companionship, as about finding stability, an anchorage so as to say. I field terribly old nowadays with realization that possibly soon I will be only bachelor among my friends.

4. Wages of secularism - At Mathura railway station there is a mural, nothing brilliant about it, but it depicts life of Lord Krishna. Now I think someday some aggrieved party will object to this, because Railway station is a government property and since we happen to be secular we can't have any association with religion, or otherwise demand a mural of Prophet Mohammad or Jesus Christ to balance the religious tilt. This is my main objection to secularism, not that it is, beyond giving a warm feeling, meaningless, but that pursuit of false ideals is a recipe to disaster and decrepitude. I know you will object that there is no realistic chance of this happening, and that would be true for now, but what about tomorrow ? For the truth is a majority of people who support have not the foggiest idea and do it for sake of fashion, it is the fringe minority but zealous about the cause (just like communist or socialist in earlier times) which drives the agenda and pushes what is kosher and what is not, step by step.