A few days ago, I was at Decathlon checking some cricket gear, and something happened which honestly says a lot about where we are lacking as a society.
A man was literally playing cricket inside the store with his kids. The children had bats in their hands, and he was bowling from the other side, right in the cricket section.
While I was checking products, they moved towards the area where I was standing. And instead of stopping, the man actually asked me to move aside because they wanted to continue playing.
Just imagine this for a second.
A customer who is there to buy something is being asked to move because someone wants to play cricket inside a retail store.
The Decathlon staff immediately came and said, โSir, aapko do baar mana kar diya hai, idhar mat kheliye, aap kyun khel rahe hain?โ
That one line made it even worse. This was not the first warning. They had already been told not to play there.
This is not about cricket. This is not about kids having fun. This is about basic civic sense.
A public store is not a playground. Products kept for sale are not free trial toys to damage. Other customers are not obstacles in your personal entertainment zone.
And the bigger concern is what the kids are learning from this.
When children see parents ignoring staff instructions, disturbing others, misusing public spaces and still behaving like they are entitled to do it, they absorb the same behaviour.
Education is not the issue here. Mindset is.
We keep talking about development, better cities, better infrastructure and better public spaces. But no system can work if people donโt have basic common sense and respect for shared spaces.