Posted in Extras

Cartnarc and now the Parknarc !

Since the basics and essentials are good and well taken care of in wealthy nations, they seem to invent reasons to complicate lives as otherwise it can be very boring and uninteresting, lacking the kind of excitement that can pump up your blood and give you the unbeatable adrenaline rush. These yankies yearn for social issues and have it in them to crusade for ‘just causes’ like for instance, returning the shopping cart to its proper place in the supermarket/shopping malls! Or parking proper within the slot! A battalion of secret service agents who call themselves ‘cart narcs’ seem to take themselves too seriously in the US. (I am told its actually a one man army that tries to take many avatars!) They take it upon themselves to approach the offending shoppers who fail to return the shopping cart and leaves it untethered wherever it suits them, leading to chaos in the traffic in the parking lot. Oh the parking lot! Whoever parks haphazard or wouldn’t park proper their car within the parking slot and parks where there is a ‘no parking’ sign may be taken care of by the Parknarcs just the way the erratic shoppers leaving their carts unattended get taken care of by the cartnarc! Some shoppers may leave their carts in the pavements alongside freeways/highways, irresponsibility at its peak. Our cartnarc appears like apparitions in front of these lazy shoppers and lecture them on the importance of returning carts to their slots in the malls. To the rude or insolent shoppers, he may try to sneak and stick the sticker that reads, ‘I don’t have the habit of returning my shopping cart to where it belongs!’ on the trucks/cars the shoppers drive. A parknarc does something similar with wayward (!) parkers! Funny. A mock exercise, still I marvel at the excuses conjured up in one’s imagination to ‘see problems’ and the rebellion in some (!) to quell the trouble before it gets out of hand! Yeah big issues : the unattended shopping cart and careless parking! Sometimes I do wish we have matters as trivial as this occupying our minds in India. For us the days start wondering whether we shall have power interruptions in scorching summers, whether the corporation would turn off the water supply, whether busfare/trainfare is to be hiked, etc. We belong in two separate worlds really. Long live the Cartnarc and the Parknarc ! I do love them really! Watched a few videos that were interesting! Google to find out more on them.