I still remember the other day when i took an auto rickshaw to reach from point X to point Y, when in the middle of my journey the engine started sputtering. The driver clearly had a gold medal in chewing tobacco. Without caring about any traffic, he promptly pulled up and started to check the engine. He quickly decided to execute an engineering miracle. I was inside the auto when i heard "phataaaaaaaakkk" three to four times. I got down to see what really happened. And there he was, SLAPPING the engine.. and signalled me to get back in. Sure enough the engine roared its way back to life.
The truth about us, Indians, is this. We are the "slapsters".
Whether it’s a battery down remote control of a TV, an old radio catching dust in the
corner or even our kids, we can fix
anything with a slap.
Guys, think really hard. Why is it that when an object (living or non-living) goes weird, our first instinct is to give a tight slap?
Is it because we saw that was the only way to keep our hot tempered Sreesanth focused on the cricket match without giving monkeys a bad name? Or is it
because we have grown up listening to the classical slapping sound
of Zakir Hussain’s Tabla? Or may be it is because that was the climax of most of
our TV shows and the credits started to roll... A thought to ponder over...
Or is it because we are a big time attention seekers? And a slap is the best way to get it? Indian
men never punch each other when their cars meet with an accident on the
road. Most, and by most I mean 9 out of 10 men, act like they were going to land a punch but let
loose a tight girly slap. Slaps and bullets make more noise thus attracting a bigger crowd.
During school days, our teachers used to slap us and never really
punched.. Not even the hardcore sports types. Taking a punch is manly for guys,
but getting slapped degraded their reputation 1000 times over. Is it that we are all slapping each other to avenge our humiliation from childhood?
Slapping has a much more revered place as
compared to other forms of violence, if you look down the history of Indian culture and vocabulary. People are more likely to say
“Kaan ke neeche bajaaoonga” (Ill give you one tight slap below the
ear” as compared to “ek ghoosa padega toh battisii bahaar aa jaayega” (Ill
knock your teeth down with one punch).
But seriously guys, our Indian slap deserves some kind of credit. I
don’t know if our lives would go on smoothly without it being
employed everyday in almost 2/3rd of our daily activities. But its just
another thing we’ve started taking for granted. Let's not talk about it
to the millions of women being abused by their husbands everyday.
