Years ago, when I was living in Delhi, a clerk in the Central Government Secretariat committed suicide, leaving a note that he was tired of being a machine. You could sympathise with him, as in a mass-society, the success of society in terms of material gains depends upon man being increasingly mechanised. The problem of man’s mechanical reaction to the outside world has become one of the bogeymen of this century

Slawomir Mrozek, eminent Polish playwright has dealt with this subject in the most interesting manner. He makes the bogey-man an institution in his play titled On a Journey.

A traveller finds post-office employees standing erect at certain intervals along a country road, forming a ‘wireless’ telegraph line by shouting telegraphic messages to one another. The puzzled traveller asks his coachman about the efficacy of this system.