The UNO story

Updated May 6, 2014

Anyone who has ever been fortunate enough to play it, would understand how a group of kids blithely disporting themselves in a game of UNO could become completely oblivious to their surroundings. All twelve of us were lost in the intensity of the game and therefore did not notice the chakravyuh the guards had formed around us. With the perfect blend of Bollywood theatrics and animal planet gimmicks they moved in for the kill, from three directions. "The college is not the place to play UNO!" came in the lame attempt at stylised dialogue by chief of the guards. Before you set your imagination on fire let me assure you what we were caught doing was barely a peccadillo. Harmless kids playing a completely safe game during Lunch hour, somewhere near the basketball court. How they turned that into an encounter is beyond me. We played the part of wounded puppies to no avail. ID cards were snatched and Adieu bid to a colorful deck. As we marched off to the HODs chamber, we knew we weren't in deep trouble. Nobody had got the memo banning UNO. But, what really disturbed me was the smug smiles on the faces of these guards, their sense of accomplishment and the stingy aura of their irrelevant "power". My mind raced off to the age old question - what is power? 

Is power respect? Or did they go hand in hand? I shook my head, respect was the last thing I had for these guards, pity would be more accurate. It is not uncommon for people to have a completely misguided idea of power. In fact, it's the usual story. Power is thrust into the hands of people with no prior experience with it and even before they know it they are overwhelmed and decide to flaunt it( like shepherds who enjoy beating their sheep, cause they can't treat anybody else like that). They soon cease to see the bigger picture and do not realise that they barely constitute a grain of sand in this world. On the rise to greatness where exactly does humility fall off? I don't know if I'll ever stumble upon the answers, but I vow to keep this memory afresh to remind me what not to become. ever. Like a popular wise guy once said " the true test of a man is how he treats people beneath him".

- Shreyas p Babu,
  The rusty writer.