THOUGHT SALAD - MY FORUM

I am proud to be part of a forum of like-minded people called Thought Salad. We meet every Sunday at one of the members’ house to discuss various topics.

The topic of last Sunday(14th September 2008) is presented to you as a play

The Play: What’s Wrong with The World and Other Issues

The Cast:
Gautam(Dr) as Himself
Ravin (Dr/ Swamy) as Himself and Other Personalities
Ponnappa (Dr) as Che Guevera
Kuttu as Himself
Angela as the Angry-herself
Mahesh (Dr) as the cool log floating on the water
Kavya (Mrs. Gautam) as Giggly 1
Tarana (Mrs Ravin) as Giggly 2

The play was staged at Dr. Ponnappa’s house over a sumptuous spread of yummy Vadas, coffee and Sweetmeats made by his mom. Thank you Aunty!

Synopsis: The play is centered around one principle question. What is wrong with our system(especially in India) and what should one do about it?

Gautam’s woes were, from the time he gets up in the morning he’s cheated by the milkman who puts urea in the milk, then when he is leaving to the office he’s cheated by the auto-rickshaw driver, later in the hospital he is conned by the patients and so on and so forth. He truly believes that since he cannot do anything about it and it is a very good idea for him to go to the United Kingdom where he was working earlier and live there happily ever after.

Ponnappa believes in the ripple effect of revolution where one person first resists the wrong of the society (he believes in fighting one wrong at a time), then two people take up the cause of fighting it and then some more join in and so on.

Angela is genetically a rebellious person and therefore agrees with him.

Mahesh,(being marinated for 40 years of his life in a strange admixture of spices such as ideology, the knowledge of the futility of ideology, practicality, the knowledge of the virtues of shamelessness and finally a pinch of the knowledge of what makes the world go around,) has some words of wisdom. He says there are three kinds of human beings in this world. The First kind are the ones who are happy to rebel against the system, because they feel the system is wrong. They are happy to rebel even if the rebellion does not bring about any results. But they are happy. The Second lot are the people who believe that to be practical in this world and to save yourselves from soul-scarring damage, one needs to be the log floating on the water that flows. Go along the tide, do take an incident, an event or a culture too much to heart, join the force if you feel like it or just be. This way success comes to you because you are not fighting seen/unseen devils all the time. Such chaps are also happy. The third kind are the ones who are the Fence-Sitters. They are perturbed by the evils of the society; they feel, because of something missing in them, they cannot fight those evils and yet they cannot accept those evils. So one has to decide to which of the classes of the above three he or she belongs.


Ravin has a gift of mesmerizing people with his words so much so that even his wife will be watching him with a gaping mouth as he speaks. Ravin agrees with Mahesh and also opines that we spend too much time in saying things like “oh, the roads are in bad condition. I’m sure the minister in charge has made his money and therefore the contractor in-charge has done a shabby job.” He (also Mahesh) feels in order to make statements like the one above, we should be standing way above in moral standards. We are as criminal as that minister every time we watch a pirated movie. We are as guilty as a Racist Caucasian every time we crack a Sardarji joke. We are not very different in God’s eyes from the way he’d look at a thief or a burglar, every time we rip music from a CD to our MP3 players.

The Play ends with Ponnappa’s mom yawning and sending signals that the play would better end.