'Is Aping Genetical?'

I must say, i had a great time at Mysore over the weekend with my folks around. As planned in advance, I was looking forward to take a bus journey and was hoping for a ‘decent’ co-passenger at the least. I did make an enthusiastic start. But the drive from home to the bus-stand was a terrible one, with traffic jam at its peak which almost consumed an hour’s time and which would have taken 25-30 mts with normal traffic. That was indeed a painful start. To worsen the matter further, there was once again a jam showing up its face from Bangalore to Ramanagaram. Never, I had been in such a pathetic situation earlier. Cursing the traffic, and traffic management, I continued my journey. Interestingly, there was a bunch of youth probably in their 20’s, sitting a little distance away from me. Their looks and the conversation they were having, inferred me to conclude that they were all college students, on a trip to some place around Mysore. An important observation I made was, they were all dressed up in a uniform colored attire. Its was red and blue to be specific. By looking at this, my thoughts started running miles across and I was wondering, how much of a time would those young chaps might have dissipated in selecting the clothes…. Suddenly, a question arose in my mind ‘why do we human beings ape ?’ ‘APE’ – Webster’s dictionary says 'to ape' is 'to imitate or mimic'. We imitate to such an extent that, it looks like aping has come in our gene universally. Everyone we see, everything we see, no matter if its good or bad, we ape. No man makes an exception here. As an example take a usual routine day…..looking at others owning new things like new mobile phones, new computers, new watches, or to that matter a new attire, or anything new and rare, we try and do the same very immediately or in the near future irrespective of our economic background.. Why do we get fascinated with the style of living, other people have? Aping may be good in certain circumstance. But it may also end up to be bad in others. It’s only when the consequence arises, can we be better judges and realize the good or bad we have done.