The Art of Cribbing

I fail to comprehend that breed of people I call 'cribbers' , I dare not enter their labryinth world for fear of being sucked into it, involuntarily.You may recognise them among yourselves or worse still, recognise yourself among them. They do not belong to a particular class or creed. In that, they do not discriminate,but across petty man made barriers.

There are the timeless general cribbers, those you may find even beside you right now. Give them a sunny day and they rue the heat,when all they do is sit in environments which are pillared with coolers, and watch down upon mortals slogging their living, pulling a rickshaw or digging the road to lay cables for their telephones. Give them a rainy day and they suddenly realise that they inhabit India, where the roads are fringed with potholes, the vehicles nothing but 'slush splashers' (of which one maybe owned by them) and to top it all, their dainty feet should not get wet for who knows, they may melt!Forget the fact that beside their palaces , there are a dozen slums where a mother keeps awake collecting water from the roof which leaks to be used later on.

Ever heard of the musical cribbers? No, its not the AIR I'm talking about. They whose voices are forever synchronised by a whine, not a lilt. Each sentence is a sing-song.Who said originality does not exist anymore? Their tunes could put AR Rehman to shame! and what lyrics- It ranges from day-to-day, monotonous activities to deprivations of luxuries. Who cares that many in India do not even have a full two square meal a day and forget that matted, forlorn look on the child who wipes your car at the traffic light for a rupee or two.

Take the ones at the workplace. They deserve their pay, never mind that the pay does not deserve them. Always, their talents are not tapped, their knowledge not being utilised. Look at their friends, all who received expensive new year gifts, and had chaffeur driven cars for their birthdays. That is life!

Who cares about the millions unemployed but who are much more of an erudite and a genius than they!

Then let us not leave out the international cribbers. To them, Singapore is a haven of cleanliness, US a heaven of lawfulness, Switzerland a visage of beauty and other such tripe. Try not to look at their hands that litter the place while they say such words, or that which bribes the policeman to release their vehicle, caught parked in a 'no parking' zone, and the fact that they just do not possess the time to look at a glorious sunrise or even at the sky for a moment.

So kudos to the above profession, those eternal mongers of verbosity who talk endlessly for just one reason - to talk, and kudos to those who have to bite our teeth and listen to it, and worse still spoil our day! Without them, our life would have been just black and white,for after all, even cribbing is an art.Have I been doing too much of the same?