Last night I went to a restaurant for dinner. And almost walked out because the noise levels inside were decibly high and the clusters of loud patrons were in full flow. They had kind of taken over the whole restaurant and distributed themselves across the place into groups of adults, oldies and children.

And the arrangement was very much like a choir – bass, tenor, alto, soprano etc.

Given that the eatery was low on cushioning and carpeting, the noise levels echoed tinnily and irritated all of us no end. But no amount of subtle signals to the warring party seemed to penetrate the cloud of disregard they seem to have built around themselves.

A few hundred miles away a girl posted something honest on a Facebook page and her friend signed in a like. Before you could say Mark Zuckenberg, the girls had been arrested.

And a mute public gazed in awe at a funeral fit for the Gods, except that it wasn’t God on the crucifix, just a misunderstood man…someone who had postured so much that he began to think of himself as divine, even as a bovine populace suckled at his teats in mindless servility.

At almost the same time someone found a motorcycle campaign objectionable simply because the ads had dared to christen a non brahmin bike with a brahminical name. And the wheels did not have a sacred cross tread to qualify.

Every tobacco chewing, betel spitting day I find that we are as a society regressing from undeserved vanity to moronic idiocy. And emerging with every step, hollower and hollower. Phewt!!!

Come on. Our politicians are playing ‘statue’ with cardboard cutout Gods. And dividing up territory cakes singing Happy Birthday tunes. And the lights go off because the Government did not pay a power bill, and the water supply stops because the roots of corruption have clogged the pipes.

Isn’t our claim to democracy and similar words too shallow to be entertained? Surely we deserve better. Surely we have earned it. At least some of us.