Riots and what’s left of empathy
Being angry doesn’t make you right. Anger can only lead us back to the place it came from. However, it can be a useful in figuring out the…
Being angry doesn’t make you right. Anger can only lead us back to the place it came from. However, it can be a useful in figuring out the way towards a better tomorrow. Look around you. There are more than enough issues to be seething about. Something or the other gloomy is going on in various parts of the world. If you feel bad for somebody whose only connection to you is through a story, perhaps it’s high time you stepped out of your bubble and tried to make a difference, no matter how tiny. Our world isn’t an ideal one; dystopia is just around the corner. At no time in history have we, as species or a nation, ever felt that things are getting better. No, never. For every good news, there are dozens of heartbreaking stuff floating on the wire. It’s a ruthless reality of our own making. Until and unless we care for each other without worrying about all the factors that could separate us — gender, religion, creed, etc. — there won’t be a utopia worth having. And that’s the bit you should be most angry about.
Being in pain isn’t optional. Dealing with it upfront is. The slightest discomfort, physical or mental or both, can tilt you off your orbit. I don’t know about you but personally, I am usually in pain. Some part of me is always hurting. One day, it’s my head, another day, it could be my back, and knees some day, and so on. Being a clumsy person, I end up hurting myself a lot too. The only difference between me in 2019 and me in 2020 is I don’t get into the details of my discomfort anymore. I know for a fact that those who are constantly in pain end up showing it sooner or later. So, best to have the suspense in place. There is no magical potion that can save the likes of me from distress. No, not even painkillers. I’ve passed the ilk of Saridon, Crocin, and Disprin. They don’t work on me. But as a countermeasure, I always carry a painkiller before leaving home in case I get a sun-induced headache or worse. Last weekend, before leaving home to check out second-hand cars in Delhi, I carried one in my pocket. Plot twist: Spent half the day outside and didn’t get any headaches. In fact, I had totally forgotten about the tablet. So, on reaching home, I was so pleasantly surprised to find it in my pocket that for old times’ sake, I popped it in with water.
As you progress from one decade to another, your idea of sexiness and cringeworthy changes. In your adolescence, what you found sexy or cringey doesn’t necessarily have to continue into your 20s and 30s and so on. To use Darwin’s theory, we evolve with time. Monica Bellucci’s Malena doesn’t have to throb your (immature) hormones when you are fast touching mid-30s. Remember the way your dad embarrassed you in front of your friends when you were in school? You find that funny now. You cringe only when he forwards you ‘Good Morning’ images on WhatsApp. So, with the passage of time, how you perceive goes through drastic transformations. In your mind, you are always young and unwilling to change but you are constantly changing. Before you apply the brakes to overhaul how it all happened, you’d have gone through endless loops of see-and-seek. Yet, you will find something or the other sexy while you will discard someone doing something cringeworthy. Well, wonder if it’s possible to mix the two? If yes, nothing is sexier and cringier than a woman whispering to you during a meeting that your fly is open.
When a person is hurt, they are going to cause hurt. To put it poetically, hurt people hurt more on both fronts; they themselves are hurting and they are hurting others too. Once you find the path inside such a tormented soul, you can cure them by showing them the power of empathy. Nobody wants to be unhappy, just like nobody wants to make others sad. But despite these strong convictions, we end up being unhappy and we leave others sad. If only we had what is required to feel each other’s trauma. Privilege can save you from a lot of existential bullshit but even the most pampered lot get hurt. Expensive perfumes can’t hide our scars. There is no escape anymore.
According to the experts, we are already residing in the Post-Truth era. A part of me doesn’t wish to accept such a grotesque tweak of chronology. In my book, truth can’t be altered. No amount of fake news, agenda-driven narratives and photoshopped images can distort the veneer of truth. To give you an allegory, truth is a river that is flowing in all possible directions, and by extension, it’s changing and somehow staying the same. Fixing your eye at one point of river and calling it Ganga defies the very concept of truth. Remember two words: it flows. What you call Ganga isn’t there, it has flown ahead, but at the same time, it’s still there. On the contrary, fake news and such termites of the Post-Truth era don’t flow. They swamp. And therein lies the greatest distinction between the two.
Speaking of Ganga, I recently came across a gorgeous Tamil song titled Yamunai Aatrile by Ilaiyaraaja. It’s from the movie Thalapathi (1991), directed by Mani Ratnam, and is basically an ode to Yamuna river for contributing to the romance between Krishna and Radha. What I find interesting about this song is the role mythology and river play in our understanding of a geographic identity. Yamuna doesn’t even flow in south India and yet, there is a beautiful tribute to it, featuring mythological figures who hailed from north India. These conjectures show how various ideas of India — as opposed to the idea of India that the elite wants to impose — coexist because we are an old civilization and our modernity can’t possibly grasp the oneness our forefathers enjoyed despite the distance that divided them. After all, a river can’t stop flowing.
Being an incorrigible lover of words, it bugs me no end when people, especially from India, use words that are fashionable but aren’t accurate at all. For years, I’ve noted them use the word ‘racist’ or ‘racism’ when they meant to say ‘colourist’ or ‘colourism’. It’s utterly idiotic to involve race when the topic centers on the colour of the skin more than the race of the person. Mainly because most Indians don’t even understand the scientific demarcations of race. They notice the degree of fairness or darkness, not the spread of gene pool. My theory why we, the so-called English-speaking desi elite, loosely throw heavy words around is because we are majorly influenced by the vocabulary of the West. We can’t help but imitate the pioneers/ambassadors of the western civilization. Racism is an actual problem there, so why not conflate racism and colourism here? Especially when finding a dark-skinned person in northern Bihar is as much a possibility as finding the same in southern Kerala? Sadly, this has become a habit now. There are no original outlooks to be found. For reasons best explained by prolonged imperial hangover, we try to integrate western understanding into eastern problems. As if without the firangi attestment, we’d be totally clueless. What this behaviour highlights — more than anything else — is our decay in our collective viewpoint. We see something but we say something else thanks to borrowed perception.
In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections of 2019, the macho men of the BJP government kept drumming up a convenient lie. It mostly went unchallenged because nobody cares about facts in the world of sentiments. According to them, there were no riots in India during Modi’s first prime ministerial term. This obviously wasn’t true at all. Riots have been an integral part of our identity throughout the British Raj and then later, after achieving independence, not one year has passed since 1947 that we haven’t had a riot of some measure in some parts of the country. This disposition towards blind hatred and deaf violence is quite unique to our subcontinent. Almost like the phoren curse of divide-and-rule won’t ever leave us alone.
Speaking of mass violence and burning cities, the capital of the country is going through a trial of sorts. As is often the case during such senseless violence — what can be sensible about violence though? — politicians and their goons are carrying out the misdeeds. And as always, the lower rung of the society, people who subsist on little and are barely planning for the next week, are paying the biggest price. Not to discount the fact that properties and vehicles were burnt but we all know who suffers in such ‘clashes’ between communities. The big picture contest is supposed to be between CAA supporters and protestors but the blood-cuddling videos that have poured out over the past 4 days tells you that it’s not that simple. People who didn’t even participate in the protests are being targeted. Political angles dictate the geometry of such events and as of now, more than 30 people are confirmed dead (read: killed). Which, at a very tragic level, also means these are the people who lost their citizenship due to CAA. And if we aren’t vigil enough, we will continue to provide fodder to the political experiments conducted at commoners’ expense.