Trust

Came across this funny spoof on the Cadbury Dairy Milk Shubh Aarambh ads. It made me laugh and then it made me realize a golden rule right out of my childhood - Never accept any food especially toffees and chocolates from strangers. Two thoughts also popped in my head right then - one being of strangers and crime association and another of trust.

I remember when I was a small kid in 1st standard we used to live in Srinagar. This was the time when militancy was at its peak over there. Apart from other evils plaguing the city, drug trafficking was also common. I had heard from other kids in school that sometimes people offered toffees or chocolates to kids and these were laced with drugs. So, at a very young age the kid got addicted to kids. For getting a continuous supply of the same, he/she did anything willingly. Being kids, the lure of toffees and chocolates are the hardest to ignore. Add to that a friendly stranger who is offering you a handful of toffees and chocolates and bang! How can you say no?

When I was in 3rd we moved to Delhi, I studied in a nice big school in New Delhi and even this school was rampant with news of how people distribute drugs in the form of toffees and chocolates. I don't know if that still happens in schools today or was it the biggest fad during those days, but it definitely instilled in me a rule for life - Never trust strangers!

Its funny, but mostly it is easier to talk to strangers. Maybe because they don't know us or we expect that they wouldn't judge us and in the end only trusting or talking to a stranger can lead to you having a meaningful acquaintance with them or a friendship. Still strangers are known to have a destructive effect on our lives. All lore of harm coming to you is associated with the word stranger. However, crime is often done by someone close to you, a stranger who came close and became much more, established trust and then stabbed you! Very rarely do strangers do anything to us - I guess we can only say that petty crimes like pickpocketing and very huge crimes such as terrorist attacks are in a way done by total strangers. The others such as burglary and murder and rape are mostly by people known to us, people we trust, yet mostly we are taught to distrust strangers as they may harm us.

The other thing that stuck me when I saw this video today was of trust. Trust is such a rare thing today. Cadbury came out with an ad which is highly improbable in this world, most people would think along lines of this spoof only in the real world. The original ad stuck a chord with us because it was so idealistic and talked of human emotions and trust the way it should be. However, we are not trustworthy and if we are, we end up getting hurt so bad that all our trust goes out the window. It would nice to have trust though, believe in the goodness of other people and be more open. There are people who dive nose-deep into things sometimes which are against the notion of trust today, such people are often called fools. Sometimes they really get a bad blow but sometimes they get a very deep reward for trusting another person through thick and thin. Love has the power to change things and trust is a very important component of love. Can you love others even strangers and believe that your trust will not be broken?