Think about it - we complain about everything under the sun. We just like to complain. We may go blue in the face denying this, but there really is no going around our undying fondness for complaining and criticizing. No conversation seems complete unless we bitch about something, whether that thing is in our own backyard or in some far-flung place halfway across the globe. Take the case of Raj Thackerey and the wondrous bunch of TV News channels in our country, for instance. The other day when Mr. Thackerey cut a cake on his birthday, a whole heap of people went up in arms over the supposedly evil way in which he brandished the knife before committing the deed. Then one of the anchormen on one of the news channels felt duty-bound to admonish the immaturity of these complainers, solemnly declaring that what goes on in a politician's household is no one's business but his own. And then the next day at work I couldn't stop complaining about the alternately hilarious and nerve-gratingly annoying news channels that we are blessed with in India. Of course, this sordid pile of complaints would never have come into being if Raj Thackerey hadn't felt the need, in the first place, to bitch about all people who exist outside Maharashtra. You see, this is one depressing chain of events that is much worse than the cliched 'vicious cycles'.
Work. I can never tire of complaining about work. Actually, no one can, as far as I know. We constantly complain about how our workplace bears an uncanny resemblance to hell, and we never get bored of proclaiming that nothing in the world is more boring than our work. And when we reach our sorrowful offices, we happily (or sadly, to be technically correct yet conceptually wrong) indulge in good old-fashioned office gossip, which is just another term for complaining about our colleagues. And the less said about the words we choose when talking about our bosses the better.
We whine about the poor infrastructure in our country (and that includes everything from our shoddy roads to our appalling education system) and we gripe about the politicians who apparently don't take steps to improve that infrastructure quickly enough. Heck, we even bemoan the political, moral (!) and economic conditions in countries other than our own, specially in the rich ones likes the US and the UK. We complain about the bad movies that are inflicted on us by clueless filmmakers in the name of cinema, and, when shown the 'House full' board at the ticket counter of our favourite multiplex, we grieve about how people are such losers that they have nothing better to do than go to the movies on a Sunday morning . We grouse about the restrictions imposed on us by our families, and we discover that taking digs at the most obnoxious member of our friends' group is the best pastime in the world.
I, of course, have my own set of pet complaints which give me a particular and oddly comforting pleasure. I grumble, loudly, when my room is messed up by the slightest amount imaginable. I never waste an opportunity to eloquently narrate to anyone who'd listen how incredibly tiring it is for me to travel some 60 km everyday to get to my workplace. I dramatically lament about how we still seem to live in the dark ages every time we have a power cut, and I curse my mobile service provider when I receive my phone bill every month. I condemn every single commuter I lay my eyes on when I'm stuck in a traffic jam (I think I need hardly mention how much disgust I express about the government and its road maintainence programmes at such times) and I grouse about rising costs when I go to my favourite restaurant and find that the rates have increased yet again. I blame everything from bad luck with the cards to the dishonest ways of my opponents when I lose a Pictionary game, and I say without remorse, when I strum out a particularly ill-tuned chord on my guitar, that my guitar strings need to be changed, all the while grimly muttering about how little time I get to practise or go to a guitar-learning class. I criticize the stupid draw system followed by the tennis tournament organizers when Roger Federer loses at any stage before the final of a tournament, and I abuse my ancient computer when, at the most riveting point of a tennis match, it slows down inexplicably and kills the live stream that I'd found after so much tireless scrounging. I think I could go on and on with this list of mine; fortunately, I've got work tomorrow so I have to wrap this post up sooner rather than later. God, that was one remarkably depressing sentence.
There are some things, of course, that I can find nothing to complain about. The movie Wall-E, for example. Watched it last week, and although I confess I was fully prepared to fall in love with it because of the glowing reviews it had received from nearly all quarters, I can fairly say that it is a stunning achievement in film-making whichever way you look at it. The guys up at the Pixar studio (incidentally, the last movie made by Pixar was the equally delightful Ratatouille) must have some seriously creative guys at the helm to have come up with as heart-warming a gem as Wall-E. The animation is gorgeous, the characters absolutely lovable and the premise immensely original and thought-provoking. If you thought The Dark Knight was genius, wait till you watch Wall-E. How I wish the Oscar jury members would get some sense knocked into their heads; if they don't nominate both of these movies for Best Picture they'd really prove themselves as the biggest bunch of knucklheads ever. Ahem, there I go again. We humans really are inherently inclined to complain, aren't we.
