“Do you know who I am?”
This is the typical question anyone who thinks he is entitled to anything and everything under the sun asks the hassled and harassed person behind the counter, wherever, whenever.
I have the most telling response to this question.
“Oh, you jumped straight out of R K Laxman’s cartoon; aren’t you the Common Man?”
The cost of petrol climbs some significant notches and the Common Man suffers. How? Now, she (Please note that the Common Man subsumes the Common Woman) may have to think twice about taking her car to the adjacent co-operative housing society compound to have tea with her friend.
FDI is going to be allowed in retail. Oh no, the Common Man will suffer (Ask Didi). These mega-retailers – the likes of Wal-Mart, Tesco – need huge space to sell all the wares. This could only mean that they will be situated at the fringes of the city, a good 30 kilometers away.
“My days of taking a drive to the main road, parking my car on the streets no matter that I block the traffic and go shopping at Reliance Fresh [This is my personal observation] have to stop. Oh, is the Common Man going to suffer or what? (sob, sob)”
“And, once I get there, I will buy things for the next week. How can I stuff all that in my itsy bitsy Toyota Camry? I definitely need a SUV at the least; bigger the better. This suffering has no end, it looks like. (sob, sob)”
The Common Man in the kitchen.
“Oh, my cooking gas subsidy has an upper limit! How can the government hit me below the belt? Don’t I have to eat? True, I have an induction stove, but the power charges are also going up. The Common Man’s misery is endless.”
Well, you get the point. The problem started with R K Laxman’s undefined, indeed indefinable conception of the common man, the Common Man.
R. K. Laxman thought the way he attired his Common Man was definition enough. He never saw the day when no one would dress like his imagined Common Man, not even the genuine common man.
Lacking sartorial specifics, anyone can legitimately claim to be the Common Man, the one who truly posed for R. K. Laxman. When fashion becomes an essential, the Common Man pervades the economy.
It is possible that one day Mukesh Ambani will want to tag himself the Common Man! And, you will have no argument against that!
The R. K. Laxman syndrome will be entrenched, will be a pandemic.
Think on the above.
Raghuram Ekambaram
6 comments:
RK laxman will be forgotten
but his common man will live for ever
as a specimen which has become extinct.
DS sir, I take your pithy comment to mean that the Common Man image that R K Laxman had in his mind has transmuted.
Living for ever and going extinct! Wow, that is truly telling sir. Common Man has been fossilized, and vigorously so.
Thanks and regards,
RE
Raghu, I was just trying to write a I Me Myself on common man but after reading this masterpiece it will seem more of a plagerised work
Bingo. "Common Man/Woman" cannot live without subsidies. Needs cheap coolies to carry their groceries to their car parked illegally as you have put it.
You are too generous, Balu. I am sure whatever your fertile mind comes up with will add significantly to taking this issue wider.
Thanks for appreciating.
RE
Dear Amrit,
Tell me whether the coolie is a Common Man! He cannot be because the "cooler" is a Common Man! So, the current definition of Common Man excludes the common man!
This is what your pithy comment made me conclude. I wish I had added this one idea to the post. And, I cannot thank you enough.
RE
Post a Comment