Help!!! Sheep In Bangalore!!!

Do you want to see sheep in action? Walking, talking and shopping? Just head to the nearest mall and look around you…you’ll find them everywhere! And if you think that’s just a lot of baloney, then just try it once for yourself on a weekend, it’ll be the last day of your doubts!



Bangalore has acquired many a mall recently, and Bangaloreans are not just happy, they are going out of their way to prove it too! Come Friday evening and they head out in herds to whichever mall they can find, much, like sheep heading to graze. No one is complaining of course…One just wishes that they take a shepherd along with them.



The other day I was waiting for the lift in one of the most popular and up market malls of the city (which by the way is supposed to get the most well-heeled crowd), when, to my utter amazement and dismay, a sheep pushed past me into the lift. Had the sheep been a little heavier, I would probably have been knocked down and trampled under the feet of the other “waiting” sheep!



Well! I forgave the bulldozer who got in before me, and headed for my shopping…only to find the place filled with more of them. Near my favorite corner of the T-shirt section, outside the trial rooms, at the billing counter, in the food court! One almost snatched a top from my hand, another requested me for using the trial room before I did (although I did not really understand whether it was a request or an order) and yet another filled me in on his weekend plans (wonder if his friend on the other end of the phone was half-deaf).



It is not just in the malls, this mentality is obvious everywhere…on the streets, inside the buses, on the roads, in the loos(!!), in hospitals…practically anywhere and everywhere. One thing beats me though! If you are in a mall in bangalore, then rest assured that more than 80% of the crowd will invariably be IT "professionals." Ahem! Should we call them IT Sheep? I wonder why they leave at home all the lessons learned in all those etiquette trainings...



I really wonder how anyone could ever tame these unruly beasts! Since formal trainings and courses don’t seem to do much as is obvious from our IT brethren’s example, we really need to find another way to help our sheep friends. Maybe someone should suggest to The Times of India to start “Shepherd India” on the lines of “Lead India” and “Teach India.” And if that sounds to you like giving too much importance to a trivial issue, then just think how bad an image we have built for ourselves in the eyes of others, if our own cannot spare us this thrashing!