Last night I went to watch Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince at Fame Malad. As ususal all the ticket windows had a queue of people. In my line there was a man haggling at the ticket counter with wife and son in tow, behind him there was a woman and then me. For reasons best known to him, the man decided to not buy tickets telling his wife “we’ll watch it on a CD”. Just when the woman in front of me was paying for her tickets, our man re-appears out of nowhere and demands the counter guy to give him tickets for Ice Age 3 in the rows that he was earlier deliberating. When I pointed out that he had left the line and that he should join the line at the end, he had the gall to tell me that he needed tickets for his child and that I should act like an adult and allow him to buy his tickets. Well there was a heated argument and war of words and eventually I let him buy his tickets (for a selfish reason that I didn’t want to continue the fight and miss the start) but also made a parting comment about how he was imparting wrong values to his child.
I feel shitty about the fact that i didn’t any more than yelp, that the start of the movie was more important than fighting a wrong doing. But I really wonder at the audacity of people to so openly act this way and not feel a wee bit ashamed. I mean these are the same people who religiously go to temples, churches and places of worship, who observe fasts and other rituals, read their scriptures and then go and flout all the good things the holy books teach us.
How can one be so unabashed, so shameless, so nonchalant? Is it so difficult to co-exist in peace and harmony? To respect another individual, to practice what you preach. What example was he setting for his son? That it is easy to just arm twist your way in any situation. Maybe that’s good for life skills or as a self defence mechanism…but where do you draw the line?
I am disgusted at myself first and then at mankind in general. This world is heading to its end surely. Imagine if for 3 movie tickets that man could pick up a fight, then terrorism sure is justified. There is so much more at stake there…land, oil, minerals, religions. Bigger stakes, bigger platforms, bigger games. Will there ever be an end to it all?
no shades of grey 
