Common Man

The Common man is back again and with a bang this time. Yes, i am insinuating to the victory of the so called 'Champion of the common man's cause party' in the recently concluded elections. But before we delve into the dynamics of this fantastic win (which we probably never do because as of now this blog keeps a fair distance from politics), i would like to know actually whom do they talk about when they say a 'Common Man'.

I had always been perplexed by this question for so many years that i was about to accept the fact that i would die without meeting this always elusive common man, then like Mahatma Buddha i got the wisdom sitting under the tree, i got the answer! Now it feels like, i had probably overheard someone talking behind the tree, but at that time i felt i got the salvation, it was the moment of catharsis for me, the ultimate goal of my life. Now i would be able to decipher umpteen speeches, articles, news item that i couldn't understand in my ignoramus days. Boy, i was happy, no i was ecstatic. I call this phase of my life 'Being Stupid' (to borrow a phrase from pursuit of happiness) and I'll tell you why.

The answer was "Anyone who is not VIP or a VVIP or a VVV.. IP is a common man". At that time it seemed quite easy, all i had to do was just filter out the VIP onwards and everyone you are left with is a common man. So, i did the exercise and reached the conclusion that barring from some top honchos of government, political class and business, everyone else is a common man including me. This of course was a disturbing thought, probably the whole definition of the common man is flawed, but how could that be? That was the wisdom i got sitting under the tree. I was hopelessly confused at that time, but now i am sure the above proclaimed hypotheses about the common man is wrong. For a man to be common he should have a definite number of qualities that everyone has and those should be different than the VIPs but i can quote the examples of at least ten people who are unlike any human on the face of this earth, yet fall into the definition of common man.

Lets talk about my college maths teacher Mr. Moorthy. It was a general consensus that he had set foot on this earth landing straight from Mars at the time when dinosaurs ruled the earth and since then he has been doing nothing else but teaching without ever looking who are the students, oblivious to the fact that dinosaurs have long been extinct and some fishes from the ocean who had joined the class millions of years ago have now evolved into creatures who called themselves humans. He used to come to the class, never bothered for attendance register or even to see if there's a soul in the class, talked to the blackboard for forty minutes, doing derivations he had done at least a million times and left without any reaction from the class, i bet he used to teach the empty class on Sundays as well. None of us had seen his full face from the front, we did however see side view of it when sometimes he looked in the direction of the window and said a very loud "Quite!!", assuming that someone is making a noise or asking a question . That was the only communication he had with class or if it was for someone outside the window or a some signal to his superiors on mars, i couldn't tell.

Okay, it's a bit of exaggeration but only a bit. He did come from Mars millions of years ago, maybe Mars had life at that time if it doesn't have it now.

My points however remains that every man on the this earth is unique and cannot be categorized for the sake of convenient speeches by politicians. There's is nothing like 'common good' which always cause a harm to someone. What i would like to see is the government coming up with the policies on which I could ask - What is there for me in this?

That's all for now, i would be back again with more so called "Common Man" who are not so common.