A former colleague wrote an article recently, wherein he lashed out at our middle class multitudes pouring out on the streets to protest corruption. He sounded both scornful and worried, and he wasn’t the only one. Many observers are worried at the middle class flexing some political muscle.
But another friend put the critique down to ‘self-loathing’ on the part of the journalist, most of us being middle class ourselves, particularly in the English media. Which made me pause and wonder: Could it be?
Why are we suspicious of middle class motivations? Is it because we are not secure in our skins or because we are afraid of getting too comfortable in our skin? Why do we mistrust ourselves?
Yesterday, I think I found part of the answer.
I live in a distant suburb, where auto-rickshaws queue up outside the railway station. Or rather, passengers wait in a queue for autos. The system worked until the suburb grew more crowded, more prosperous. Now passengers dash up to autos regardless of the queue. Some walk further to hail autos before they can reach the queue. Those who are waiting patiently begin to lose patience.
The result is chaos and frustration. Things are always worse in the rain because autos are scarce and nobody wants to walk home. Yesterday was one of those squelchy, rainy nights.
I patiently waited in line. Five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. Finally one auto trundled up, and was promptly hijacked by people right at the back of the queue. We all sighed, shuffled, mumbled. The same thing happened again, then again.
Finally, one gent stopped a freshly hijacked auto by planting himself firmly in front of it. He asked the hijackers to vacate the auto and wait in queue like everyone else. The hijackers were a family including an elderly gent, and some women. The gent began to plead that they should be allowed to go first because, “We have ladies with us.”
This argument didn’t go down well. Angry little murmurs went up: “What, we’re not ladies?” and “We also have ladies with us.”
The old gent began to shout. His next argument was: “If I die right now, who’s responsible?” In other words, he was possibly hypertensive, and if we made him get off, he might suffer a heart attack.
He shouted louder at the protesting man who was trying to enforce the queue system. This younger gent then trained his guns upon the auto driver. “Make them get off.”
The auto driver, keenly aware of his precarious position, stared into the night, silent. The elderly gent, sensing victory, asked the driver to drive away. The younger gent, sensing defeat, shouted some more at the driver, began to abuse him. He said, “It’s really the (insert strong language) driver’s fault. Why do these guys allow it?”
I’m glad the driver drove away then. I sensed the younger gent was tempted to hit him. And there was a likelihood that others would join in.
And then I remembered why I mistrust the middle class. We break rules and expect to get away with it, counting on the silence and civility of others like us. Meanwhile, the poorest, most powerless guy is abused, held responsible for our mess. Because we don’t have the guts to fight lawlessness and corruption in our class, we shift blame upwards or downwards. We kick those who are lower down on the ladder, because there is somebody below us whom we can kick. And if we loathe ourselves now and then, why are we surprised?
— Annie Zaidi writes poetry, stories, essays, scripts (and in a dark, distant past, recipes she never actually tried)