Scary !!

Now I know why I don’t get reminded of a policeman even once, while having food! Although scientists have proven beyond doubt that any smell, taste would bring us back the old things which are stored in our memory. I am pretty sure I might have got scared not once but many times, when I was a small kid while refusing to eat by hearing “Eat fast, else policeman will come to catch you”. But, scientists have also found that till the age of seven, our brains would not have grown enough to store those memories, and they just disappear. Mention of policeman was good enough in those days to scare us, probably because we never had a chance to watch Salman Khan in the movie Dabbang to know that a cop can entertain as well by becoming “chulbul”.  By the way, last week he proved that he can scare people too by a “kick”! Scary figures, 100+ crores in box-office!

Fear is one emotion we have to go through at some point in time or other. We go and watch horror movies, if at all we feel that we are not scared enough in life.

Group of owls got scared by monkeys in Delhi! (Please note that collective noun for a “group of owls “ is a parliament as per Wikipedia ). Easy way to drive away a monkey is by deploying another monkey. Till now the practice was to engage captive and trained monkeys to scare away these naughty langurs. This has been working fine. But, protests from animal right activists forced the authorities to withdraw support of these intelligent monkeys. Now they have hired 40 people who will be pressed into service. They will mimic the noises of monkeys to drive the real monkeys away. What all one has to do to get out of fear! I am sure human right activists are watching this development closely!!

At Sibley in Washington DC, number of average births has increased from 9.2 births per day to 12.2 births per day ( 32.6% increase) in the past month. Do not worry too much how fractional births happen, these statisticians can make any number real! Somebody analysed as why this baby boom happened. They found out the reason – fear. People in that area got scared when government announced shut down in October last year. They were at closed doors for 16 continuous days, totally scared whether they would lose their jobs for ever. They were clueless as what to do but sure they did something, which made them much busier after 9 months. Yes, at times fear can be re-productive also!! Would I be wrong in saying that we Indians are always too scared!!

To bring in discipline, some amount of fear needs to be created. In Belarus, the ever ruling president (since 1994), who is termed by many as “Europe’s last dictator” has recently announced a severe punishment. If people pollute the environment by throwing garbage on road, their vehicles will be confiscated. I am sure many of us who live in India, the so-called democratic country, would welcome such a move, people dump garbage in front of the warning banner which clearly states “500 rupees fine for littering this place”. But remember, people in Belarus are in constant fear. Last time when people resorted to peaceful clapping to protest his policies, thousands were arrested. One person had to pay the fine using his remaining hand! It is important for us to understand that we should behave as we should behave in a democracy, else in future we may have to pay fines using one or no hands. Or who knows, with no opportunity to pay the fine at all!

I was so scared when I was in 6^th standard, not once but thrice in a row in a day. First when Joseph, my classmate who had been studying in 6^th standard for the last 2 years , after failing in the previous standards for more than once, had shown me a knife! He had brought it into class to threaten or even harm some seniors in the school. I got scared again when he asked me to keep it in my lunch bag for the day, I didn’t have a choice but to oblige. Then I got scared again, when somebody tipped the class teacher that a knife was brought in the class. And the teacher announced that she would search everybody’s belongings. I just didn’t know what to do. If I told that knife belonged to Joseph, he might stab me the very next day with another, bigger knife. If I confessed the knife was mine, I would be thrown out of the school. But, Joseph was more fearless than I thought. He quickly got up, in the pretext that he wanted to spit out through the window (all windows were emergency windows, with no grill/shutters). On the way he managed to take out knife from my bag and threw it through the window, before the search operation started! All’s that un-well ended well for me!!!

Have a fun-filled weekend. Be fearless, at least for a few more days until my next blog post arrives!