IN a shopping mall in Mumbai seventeen people got stuck in a lift for five full hours! They cried, shouted, screamed for help and to top it all had an infant with them who started panicking and didn’t stop bawling. The seventeen when rescued later with the help of a fire fighters’ forklift immediately complained about the bad maintenance standards of the mall.
What the seventeen quietly, oh very quietly did not speak about was that it was a lift meant for ten people and seven extra had crept in! “Why did so many of you crowd into the lift even when the notice said ten?” “Because there was no lift operator!” We need a lift operator to police a lift! I remember the first time I’d gone to England. I stood on the pavement and watched fascinated, “You watching the snazzy cars?” asked my friend Philip. “No,” I said, “I’m watching the drivers obeying rules without a policeman around!” It was a fascinating sight: No honking, because, unless there was an emergency there were no pedestrians to honk at, no cars cutting lanes, breaking signals, no over speeding!
They didn’t need policing, there was already a built-in police mechanism in place in all of them, and I’ve seen this in both Europe and America, though I admit, a little less in Italy. How often I’ve seen my driver slowly, very slowly edging past a red light, “What are you doing?” I ask sharply looking up from something I’m reading. “There’s no policeman sahib!” he says with a grin, knowing I am annoyed.
No, it’s not just overloading a lift, it’s in everything we do: Watch an office where the boss has gone on a holiday; the whole office has a holiday. The boss comes back to see no work done and swears he’ll never go out with his family again. And then when catastrophe strikes, when we don’t know whether we are going to make it out of the lift alive, we blame the liftman or policeman.
“That accident wouldn’t have happened had there been a policeman around!” Open your eyes; can’t you see that the accident happened because you wanted to get away once more in breaking a rule? Start self-disciplining yourself. Stop at a red light; go only when it is green. Discipline builds character and finally it is that discipline that you’ve taught yourself that may save your life and that of your loved ones. No, it’s not just about overloading a lift..!
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