WHAT WE HAVE DONE!!!

A soldier dies in a battle unaware that his wife is about to give birth to his son. A man thirsts for water in the desert while we sip a cold chocolate latte at the nearest CCD outlet with our friends. A Government official signs a bill that passes a hike in petrol rates sitting in an AC room while a poor man waits for a bus that would take him home unaware that he might not have enough money to pay the price of the ticket anymore. A wife is burnt to death at the house of her in-laws because her father was unable to pay the dowry that was asked. A father rapes his own daughter and then slits her neck and leaves her for dead on a railway track.

No-this isn't a worst case scenario of what happens in our society. In fact-this is what happens in our society. For those of you who want to know from where did I get the above paragraph-well, they were all headlines in the last weeks Times of India. I know-sounds like end of the world is around the corner. But even if it isn't, I secretly hope it is.

I have tried to find meaning in all this. Where all this will make sense. Where this savagery of man will be justified. But then the deeper I think, the longer I let my heart try to understand this destruction of mankind by man himself-the more sure I become that perhaps we are better dead than alive. For where will all this stop? Or will this even stop? I try to be hopeful, to be cheerful that one day man will realise that he gains nothing by destroying his own self but then it hits me that man is too selfish, too foolish to understand this.

For he doesn't understand that hate is the one thing that is sure to destroy him. It's stunning to see how low we have stooped. This Thursday I opened the newspaper to read about how a father raped his daughter and then to save himself, slit her neck and left her for dead on a railway track. The girl though managed to move away from the track in the nick of time. Yet, she was unable to call for help and lied in the nearby bushes till the next morning when she was found by some passers by and taken to a hospital. Luckily she survived to live the tale.

Unfortunately she will have to live through the pain that her very own father caused her.

The story brought a lump to my throat and for a few minutes I imagined that girl, that 14 year old girl, being sexually abused by the very man responsible for her birth and I tried to understand why any father would do such a thing to his own daughter, to his own blood. Has man really stooped so low?? Have we really become this pathetic??

For why would we do this to our own selves? Why are we all hell bent upon destroying each other? Give me one reason that justifies war. Give me one reason that justifies the existence of nuclear weapons today. Give me one reason that justifies a crime as heinous as rape. Give me one reason that justifies dowry. Give me a reason~I plead you, I beg you, to give me a reason that justifies the injustice that is being done in the world today.

I have dreamt of a world where children can play without the fear of a bully taking their toys away from them. I have dreamt of a world where women can roam the city streets without the fear of being mugged or raped. I have dreamt of a world where a father takes as much pride in his daughter as he does in his son. I have dreamt of a world where there's a smile on every man's face, where there are no beggars and where every man has a roof to cover himself and enough money to feed himself and his family. And believe me it's not an impossible dream. For nothing and no one can convince me that there can't be a world where peace reigns supreme and where life really is beautiful. That world is possible but not plausible.

For the world that we see now is the payment of our very own sins. We have become so embroiled with our own selves, with our own success that we have stopped caring about anyone and anything that doesn't directly affect us. If there's an earthquake in China why should we care unless one of our relatives was living there. If a girl is raped in Delhi, why should we care as long as she doesn't belong to our family? If a man guns down a bunch of school boys in US why should we care as long one of those boys is not our son. It's our selfishness, our innate desire to care only about ourselves which has got us here. Man was always a selfish being. And today we are paying the price for being selfish.

Yet somehow we still haven't realised this. We still refuse to accept that the blame lies with us for what our society has turned into. We refuse to believe that the society we are living in is one that we have ourselves created. Our selfishness, our ignorance has given birth to this society of crime, evil and inhumanity. For we don't care if there are riots in Rajasthan as long as those riots don't start in our state and our city. And even if they do~all we do is lock our doors and don't venture out for our safety comes first. Survival is the only thing that matters.

I want to say that there's still hope left for humanity yet my heart doesn't believe it anymore. For every time I want to restore my faith in humanity, somehow another story pops to my mind revealing that man indeed has reduced to nothing a but a savage animal fighting for his own survival. Where the fittest survive and those who are weak are left for dead~cared for by none and have to fend on their own. I don't know for how long humanity is going to survive but the way we are going I hope it doesn't for long. For really~humanity already seems to be extinct and life seems to be already on the wane.

Somewhere out there I hope there's some one who can restore my faith in humanity and my pride in being a human. For they say that there's light at the end of every tunnel. I hope there's one in the tunnel that we seem to be moving. But much more importantly~I hope that if there's a light then it isn't of an on coming train. We really are on the path of collision. Question is :

WILL WE SURVIVE THIS COLLISION OR ARE WE ALL GOING TO DESTROY OURSELVES IN THE HOPE TO SURVIVE?

Yet-there remains a hope. An event that I witnessed two years ago makes me believe that even though the candle of humanity maybe flickering dimly but it hasn't been extinguished yet. Two years ago while I was in Mumbai and a month away from entering Manipal~around 5 blasts were caused by terrorists in the local trains killing thousands and wreaking havoc in the city. As Mumbai went berserk in the madness of this mindless crime, it's citizens rose and became the beacon of hope in all this confusion. Several roads were closed as a result of the blasts and thus there was a huge traffic jam on every street. I was in Dadar that day and in the evening when I left for home, I saw several citizens including students standing at the roadside carrying glasses of water and packets of biscuits offering it to the hapless passengers travelling in buses and taxis or even walking as they all tried to make their way home. Even today that scene brings a lump to my throat. I and my friends joined them in our bit to do something, however significantly small,to help ease the pain of a city still reeling from the effects of that blast. As we distributed water and biscuits to the travellers, I felt a small sense of pride. I noticed those around me~all standing side by side-housewives, students, working men, young children~all strangers, unaware of each other's identities yet joined by a common cause to help those in need and to unite against those who wanted to destroy our city~OUR MUMBAI. That day I realized that the human spirit, however bleak, still flutters. The irony was that it took an act of destruction to bring about an act of construction.

LOVE STILL FLUTTERS IN THE HUMAN HEART AND AS LONG AS IT DOES THE HOPE FOR HUMANITY WILL EXIST!!