A stitch in time saves nine, look before you leap, a friend in need is a friend indeed, better safe then sorry, be the change you want, and the best from the bottom, change yourself for trying to change the world is impossible – all axioms we hear ad nauseum conveniently overlooking the fact that inspite of the perverse logic they may have behind them we unfortunately are human, all too human rather then programmed androids which basically means our emotions at time swamp our logic making all this superfluous enough to be dumped in the trashcan!

In a society where forgiveness is a right rather then a privilege, where ‘saying’ sorry exonerates you from whatever wrong you have done, where the wronged is expected nay demanded to absolve the instigator because the latter has been magnanimous enough to admit to his faults, in a society where all this and more is the norm rather then the exception, where such criteria of logic abound aplenty, I am bemused when I hear people throw up their hands in despair when something shakes them out of their anesthetized selves and rave about how they came to ‘this’ point, this being whatever low depths humanity has topped at the moment. What happened to fairness and treating others as you expect to be treated? How does anything, anything at all justify the absence of either? Why should admission of a vice automatically confer absolution on the perpetrator? What gives anyone of us the divinely conferred right to be unfair? And last but not the least since when and how the hell has unfairness been something one should NOT speak out against?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that ‘this’ happened because we all conveniently ignored the umpteen red, flashing-in-neon warning signals ‘that’s’ which preceded it. ‘We say things we don't mean. We make promises we don't keep. "I'll call you." "Let's get together." We know we won't. On the Human Interaction Stock Exchange, our words have lost almost all their value. And the spiral continues, as we now don't even expect people to keep their word; in fact we might even be embarrassed to point out to the dirty liar that they never did what they said they'd do.’

We excuse all that and more. We bury the basic courtesies of interaction behind excuses of being busy or swamped with life. We conveniently ignore the fact that the rare few who still live by some code of ethic take time out for these fundamental courtesies make time because THIS is important. We deny that anyone but us has problems and yet they still choose to live life by some rules. The bare minimum has become the unattainable zenith in the world of today and then we have the freaking temerity to wonder where we went wrong.

Individuals are the basic building block of any society. Infringements and personal transgressions between individuals, like termites erode and ultimately eat through the fabric of society leaving behind nothing but a rotting, tottering fabric which rips apart at the slightest trauma. It takes not a day but a whole lifetime of consistent violations to happen and yet we still act as if it happened out of the blue. THIS is the example we set for the coming generations and then we wonder. We wonder where we went wrong, we wonder when it comes back full circle and bites us in the back and we whine! We whine and we complain conveniently ignoring the forgotten multitude that we treated in the manner we are lamenting about.  Courtesy, may it rest in peace, along with chivalry and more of the now extinct or bordering on extinction club.