Common man and the street protests

Common man was having the time of his life. He was actually. For one, it is a less clichéd opening line for a blog post than "It was a dark and stormy night", but cliché nonetheless.

So, he was having the time of his life. Normally, "work" and "time of his life" wouldn't even feature in the same postal code, but unusually here, this "time of his life" was directly linked with his 'work' (sic). Sure, common man didn't have a hot secretary nor did he have a bunch of minions saying "yes master" every time he passed by at the workplace, but a junket cum sinecure in the hallowed environs of central London was a far better substitute.

Common man did everything a good tourist should do in central London. He crossed Abbey Road, then he crossed Abbey Road again, waltzed past the Tower Bridge, polkaed past Big Ben, troikaed past Buckingham Palace, flamencoed past Hyde Park, and then, crossed Abbey Road yet again. The fact that common man couldn't actually dance his way out of Funky Town is only yet another issue.

This post, however, is not about any of the above.

Meanwhile, Common man stared out of the window of the top decker of the red bus he was traveling in. Even allowing for his somewhat poor eyesight, common man chanced upon something he only chances upon too often.

An obstacle in the form of a large public demonstration was hindering his (bus') path forward.

Now Common man had a way with these. From Naxalbari to Rome, from Jakarta to Glasgow, and other such places where his travels took him, common man always ran into these protests/demonstrations. He had no idea how these demonstrations followed him wherever he went, or whether he was the one unconsciously following them in the first place. In fact, it is now acknowledged that the "jester in the sidelines in a cast" was referring to Common Man and not Bob Dylan, as popularly believed.

Either way, the very reason he was christened "Common man" was owing to his remarkable similarities with the eponymous RK Laxman character.

And here it was again. His London trip was punctuated by yet another of those street protests. And there were not one, not two but three protests, all happening at once, in the little street that is Whitehall.

The first protest was on behalf of the Armenians against the Turks, or vice versa, Common man wasn't sure. In fact, neither were the protesters. One was the usual mandatory weekly protest against the mayor. And the last one intriguingly was by the Sikh community, and Common man couldn't quite make out over the din what they were protesting.

Two things stood out in the above scene in Common man's mind. One was a bunch of protesters who were taking some time out of the whole protest thing and sharing a bunch of beers sitting down in the street, in true hippy style. And the incredible thing, going by the placards they carried, was that they were all there for different protests. He couldn't quite imagine whether a bunch of random people had just met up in different protests here, or if a bunch of people came to protest for the heck of it, and all joined different ones.

Either way, Common man imagined that their conversation would be something like this.
A: Awfully sorry to bother you ol' chap, but which protest are you here for ?
B: The Mayor one, mate. And terrible weather.
A: Or'rite. I did the Mayor one last week, so I decided to do the Turk/Armenian one this week.
B: Right ho ol' chap. So are the Turks protesting against the Armenians, or is it the other way round ?
A: I don't know mate. The Turks are busy settin' up Doner Kebap shops to cash in on the opportunity, so I can't be bothered to ask them.
B: Arsenal lost again.

The other striking thing was the signboards being put up all over the place, starting a fortnight before, warning people that there would be some kind of disturbance to traffic at this day between this time and that time, and apologizing for the inconvenience caused and all that. Common man wondered where else in the world would the mayor of a city put up signs that the people of the city were taking out a protest against him, and apologize to the people for the inconvenience they (the people) themselves caused. And the people in turn take an appointment with the mayor to protest against him at that specific time!

Yes, London was truly an amazing place.