Its Not Our Fault..(Part I)

I recently saw Ghajini. To be true, according to me, except aamir, the rest of the acting looked like being really untrained. I mean, the policewaala runs, then Aamir runs behind him and then Jiah follows! What idiocy? But yes, even though it was a remake of Memento, the story somehow managed to leave a little bit of impression on me. Anyhow, I am certainly not here to portray my critical abilities. Then what made me describe this? Yesterday’s headlines.

To start with I would like to share my immediate reaction to the text i read. Owing to the inherent monotonousness of the event, it did not provoke anything in me, except, putting it down in words. I am confident about my assumption, which is that this very same feeling would have been there in many psyches who would have read those unfortunately familiar words. Its not at all rare! Its really common. Probably so common, that even if a grotesque and monstrous image of it appears on any of the news channels, we dont halt anymore. Our souls are not hoicked. Our mind is so preoccupied by the worries of the latest brands that we have to buy today, or by the meeting with some international big shots who have managed their nation so well that they rarely come across events like this, or by a social party we have to attend in the evening...we are so accompanied by these “essentialities” that the echoing holler of the half naked and severely bruised girl lying on that pavement or the dirty gutter, not dirtier than the Indian pervert psyche, goes shamelessly unnoticed.

I glanced at that text , “A 24yr old MBA student raped in Noida”, and immediately that dialogue by this new actress Asin, in Ghajini reverberated in me- “Kin kin logon se bhaagengi ladkiya..” As I had mentioned earlier, it really did not jerk me. A thought, or half, would have struck me and the next moment I was reminded of an important call that I had to make. And this very news faded away in the already populated (read: polluted) conscious of mine. But something did make me think about this for long and arrive at a very obvious conclusion which needed to be highlited. The next day, i.e. today, that news had been allotted a small corner of page three in the main newspaper, but the shocking part is, it contained something really horrendous. An aged man, probably a mukhiya of the village where the incident took place, was highlighted making this statement, “So what? The girl was JUST raped. Its not a big deal.” This was something really dismaying. That too, coming from an elderly!! This statement baffled me to a very unexpected extents. I was shocked. In fact, for that matter, I still am. My mind could not arrive at anything but one statement, “Its not OUR mistake”.

Yes its not. Its not our mistake that we do not pay any attention. Or we do not act much except for expressing our grief and commenting on events like this and then forgetting about it. Its the mistake of the Indian Law enforcement agencies, and the government, or in the words of a layman, the RULES which are there in India. I quote another example from the Indian cinema highlighting my point. The movie Gangaajal. I know..whats the first thought that would come to anyone reading this. No! We can’t be barbaric! I know...even I used to say such things. And I know myself that I am not a person who has a violent bone in my body, or supports any kind of barbarism. But I have a few questions to everyone reading this:

How much PATIENCE are we supposed to keep and how much BELIEF are we supposed to have in the authorities’ perennial hollow promises?

How many times do we have to stray ourselves away from this bitter and ghastly truth that The Indian Law and Order is a perfect embodiment of WASTE OF RESOURCES AND BRAINS?

Are we supposed to nurture these rapes, and murders, and child abuse etc by just looking “away” from them accepting the fact that we can do NOTHING?

(contd..)

PS: Cross posted on The Lounge