Digging for Meaning

Recently I saw a documentary called ' Superheroes '. Its about a bunch of people who wear costumes and patrol their city streets to fight crime. To be honest, I was a bit apprehensive about watching it; I felt that it would make me cringe. (I cringe seeing people being made fun of. Can't help it. I hate it when people do that to others. I cannot see those TV shows where we are supposed to laugh at someone else's misery/ embarrassment. I hate it when TV shows trivialize real feeling of people or glorify the emotions to turn it into a farce. Just can't stand it.) But it turned out to be a very human story of genuine people who are fed up with the apathy of people around them. Often they were victims first and vigilante as a result of it. It was an act in empathy and escape combined that propelled them to wear mask and attempt at creating a change for the better. It was inspiring to me. Not for the caped crusading (well, not going to happen), but for the beautiful...

"Look at that. A girl smoking! A girl should not be smoking cigarettes." After watching a play at the Kamani Auditorium in Delhi, I was leaving on an auto rickshaw towards CP. It is the heart of the capital region - fashion, cultural, business & political nerve center. And the navigators of this nerve center - the auto wallahs, the cabbies - are largely migrants, who bring with them the medieval India's twisted ideas of morality. Its amazing how far apart the worlds of the navigator and his customers are.  (though not necessarily from different moral molds.) On the way to CP, we crossed a couple of college students and among them was a girl who was smoking a cigarette. Upon seeing her, a spontaneous statement came out loudly from my auto driver's mouth. The first statement uttered in the journey so far. He sees a girl smoking and out pops a strong moral statement that he felt strongly about. "A girl should not be smoking cigarettes." I asked him i...