I remember coming to I C Colony around 17 years back. When my building was just some brick and mortar starting to climb up from the red dust that was near the Gorai creek line, I thought 'Is papa seriously thinking of shifting us to this ... this ... Sahara Desert?' For it sure looked like a desert to me ... all red clay, no a soul for miles around, no shops and definitely no transport hubs.
By the time our home was complete and ready for us to move into, there were other constructions already on. Pretty soon, I C Colony lost its fresh jungle look. As the years went on, more and more sophistication settled in and now its allegedly one of the posher areas in Borivli.
With that much of progress, me and most of the happy people in I C were pretty happy that we did not see many burglaries, save the odd one during the still of the summer vacations.
All that has changed within a span of a year. 3 gruesome murders within a span of a year and a half, and one of them a little baby. I hear whispered comments of 'I C is no longer a safe haven.' I happen to disagree. I believe that you are as safe as you try to make your life. Barring accidents, which I classify as acts of Destiny, there is nothing to make life dangerous in I C Colony's quite lanes.
When I try to think of what could have happened to increase the incidence of crime in this colony, I can only come up with one reason - Conspicuous Consumption of wealth. A lot of very very rich people live in this area, own flats, drive swanky vehicles. But while these are the obvious signs of prosperity, there is also a dark underbelly to life in I C. These are the immigrant workers, the lay unskilled man on the street who makes his living by hiring out himself to building contractors, and last but not the least, the children of the less-than-well-to-do people.
I do not paint all of them with the same brush of being blinded by the conspicuous wealth on display, but the fact remains that there are some who are unable to hold off the temptation to try and make some quick money.
For instance, the double murder of Glenda Lobo's mother and her infant son Dylan. Those are teenage kids accused of the most horrible kind of crime, for God's sake!! While one can understand a poor man trying to make off with valuables and knocking off someone in the process (though a crime is a crime is a crime any way you look at it), I can't digest kids murdering ladies and babies for pocket money!!
Makes me wonder what kind of sc$#ed up generation I live in. Peer pressure is easy to blame but I don't believe that it holds water any more. Do your friends tell you that if you aren't wearing so-and-so brand, you are 'uncool'? It's just a perception, for God's sake! I am as cool as I perceive myself (maybe it's just me and being pretty unconventional here) and I don't feel the need to conform to a common standard of 'passable maal'.
But I guess for today's spoilt brats (and not all Gen X kids are brats) to control their anger, they need to be weaned off AXN and Steven Seagal and of course, the omnipresent RPG ... the one I hear most quoted is Quake. And I see what it makes of the people I work with, when they are in game play mode.
Come off it, people!! Life is a different reality.
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