So, What Happened?

When did egos become bigger than lives and loves? When did it become so important to be part of the herd? When did children stop being children? When did the world change into this unrecognizable monstrosity? Was I asleep? Or was it just my conscience? Or was it that the collective conscience of every single person on this planet fell asleep these past few decades?

I remember being a kid. I remember the innocence and the curiosity. I remember kneeling down in prayer with my friends, in our attempt at giving a moth a proper burial. A moth. So when was it that things changed so much that kids started flashing guns, taking lives even? When did being “cool” become more important that being human?

Why is it that none of us question the very disturbing fact that is life as we see it these days? That none of us stop to ask ourselves “What did we forget to pass on? As a “civilization”? Where did we go wrong?” When did we forget to let kids be kids? And why? Why did we force an adult existence upon them so much ahead of time? If we couldn’t give them any notion of peace, why did we find it so bloody necessary to give them our wars? Wars of race, caste, color, gender, and those arbitrary lines we like to call ‘borders’ – lines we continue to draw with every “us” and “them”.

Survival of the fittest became the new global mantra, and we the people, we the adults, shrugged and walked on. Watching from the sidelines as each new life struggled, even fought, to make a place for itself in the world. Sadistically weighing their struggle against our own and comparing notes to see which was worse. Like book keepers. Moments away from placing bets on who’s going to make it and who isn’t. Like vultures. Even worse, because we’ve become scavengers of the soul.In the name of letting them find their feet, we left them in the wilderness. Literally. Then is it even surprising that the world is becoming, more and more, a jungle. And people animals.

There’s no point in pointing fingers at a particular section of people in a mad rush to place blame. Because never mind how hard we try we can never escape the truth that the blame lies with all of us. With each and every thinking feeling individual who didn’t do everything in his power to pass on that very same legacy. Of thinking and feeling.

Try Saying S.P.A.D.E

Yet another disaster has come and gone in the life of Bombay and yet another spate of headlines like “Bombayites are so resilient”, “Look how Bombay is back on is feet”, and some such must have been screaming at us from newspapers and news channels across the country. I say “must have” because I don’t follow the news. I would’ve been a journalist if it weren’t for the fact that journalism has been dead in this country for a long long time.

I have a problem with any Indian being called resilient. It is sad and ironic that the media which shouts in your face that it is all about bringing truth to the people has never bothered uncovering the truth behind our “resilience”.

“Survival of the fittest” has long been the mantra by which people in Bombay live. But who is “fit” enough to withstand the impact of a bomb, or a gunshot, or a premeditated attack involving both?

We are not a tough people. We are resilient by necessity. And sometimes only by force of habit. We do not have a choice. Show me a Bombayite who can sit at home the day after a terrorist attack and I’ll show you a person who has means to subsist without his daily bread. The majority of Bombay, however, cannot afford the luxury of revolting, or even reacting to the abysmal conditions of living that are thrust upon them by that thing we call a ‘government’.

Rich people don’t board local trains. Neither do they wade through chest-high water when the sewage system fails every monsoon. Rich people sit in their cozy little penthouses or fly away to exotic destinations while the masses face the wrath of disasters both political and natural. It is the common man who faces the threat of being obliterated via the means of terrorism and/or natural calamities.

So it is not courage that takes them out into the world after a 7/11 or the more recent, and the more in-your-face, terrorist attack. It is sheer necessity that brings them back on to the roads and trains. It is the need to earn yet another day’s livelihood that constantly puts them in the line of fire.

I can’t imagine when news people will stop patronizing us with the resilience crap and actually call a spade a spade.