Within and without

I had a very disturbing experience when I was on vacation to a hill station with my family last week. We visited an ancient temple. It is a an ancient temple where five rivers originate from one point. I had been looking forward to visiting this place for a long time.  The temple is picturesque and the ambience is indeed very serene. Water flows from a stone channel within the temple. This water is very pure as it is unpolluted. 

Inside the temple there are instructions painted on various walls which informs the visitors that photography is prohibited. Almost every visitor equiped with either a digital camera or cellphone were merrily clicking snaps while ignoring the painted instructions. I tucked away my cellphone inside my waist pouch and pointed to a few people that photography was not allowed. While one elderly man put away his camera I could read the expressions on his face which betrayed his feeling that I was doing the unwarranted job of a moral police and that I was acting a spoilsport. However, the others continued to take snaps of their near and dear ones standing beside the water flowing through the mouth of the sculpture of a cow.

I felt a sudden surge of anger.  I spoke to the priest in the temple and asked him why he did not enforce the rule. He responded that people simply ignored his pleas like they had done with mine.  He appeared impotent to handle the apathy of the tourists. 

I instantly stepped out of the temple as I could take it no more.  All the tourists appeared to be plainly ignoring the no-photography instruction.  That brought one question to my mind: how often do we follow the rules when there is nobody around to police? 

Each one of us have jumped the trigger sometime or the other with a knee-jerk reaction to happenings around us ( which do not have direct bearing on us )  without looking within ourselves to find out how honest we are in expecting others to have behaved in a certain way.