I had written this after the Virginia Tech shootout and I write again — capitalism is a great slave, but a pathetic master. This truth unfortunately gets lost in our chase for that elusive dream... especially in America, the land that has been marketed as the land of dreams — the Great American Dream. No doubt, the US, on its part, has been fairly successful in creating material comfort aplenty. It has upped the living standards of its average citizen to be among the highest in the world. Thus, the shop window of Americanism looks lucidly attractive; you’ve got all of them standing there — from Bill Gates to Michael Dell — in Tommy Hilfigers and Ralph Laurens! And that is what has made the rest of the world mindlessly chase Americanism.

What goes unseen is that America also happens to be the land that is right amongst the top in terms of the number of divorces per thousand, the number of single-parent families per thousand, the number of old people in old-age homes, the number of rape cases per million, the number of suicides, homicides, and of course, the number of college/school shootouts... After all, in a society where ‘what you are’ is equal to ‘what you have’ plus ‘what you consume’, the only way to achieve more is to have and consume more (That’s why we call the US a consumerist society, and its culture, consumerism). But in this race, you sacrifice those that have the maximum power to make you happy — family, emotions and love. And you don’t even realise when you’ve become a dry-eyed moron. And then, one day you are left alone... probably divorced, without children, and in an old-age home. And suddenly, you realise that there is emptiness all around... But by then, it’s really too late.