Two things have been churning my blood and making my hair stand on edge these past few days…..
I've been reading maximum city by suketu Mehta…am on the last chapter……..i like the narrative style….the flow and more so the way it manages to curdle your blood…chilling which is surprising as I don't think it was meant to….but the starkness of the life he writes about….the sheer edge on which the lives of many people I didn't even know existed lies on…..the lives of the bar dancer and the hitman in particular…… the non dramatic way in which he narrates their stories is what makes it chilling…..devoid of all the makeup….it so surreal…yet closer to you than you'd have imagined….the way they accept what they do for a living…..and carry on with it…..you realize it could be anyone….scarily enough….even you…..i realize with each encounter I have…….that what a "frog in the well" view I have of life….choices made are often so clear and simple for me….and yet I agonize…brand and label……I'm glad I picked up this book …. It was such a random choice…and trust me…for someone who reads like I do…sporadically and inconsistently…in frequency and the choice of material that I make…it was most unlikely a choice…..but with 2 hours to kill at an airport……there was something about the title that sounded vaguely familiar……infact I half expected it to be a page three of bombay type of fiction…..i really don't know why I picked it up….but am glad I did………I also realized that I am enjoying non fiction more than I thought I would….
The second is the death of Scarlet keeling….this 15 year old british girl was found naked and dead on anjuna beach in goa….. that a human being can be violated in the most ultimate way in such a public place is so scary that it made my hair stand up…I haven't been able to get it off my mind since the past few days….drugged, raped and killed…how and when and where and by whom?? Questions that remain muddled in the mess that is made of it…that a human being isn't given dignity even in death….cover ups and accusations flying fast …. Fingers being pointed to her mother's lifestyle…as though it justified what happened…..and to think that the system that is meant to protect us is where the needle of undoubted suspicion points at first……that a girl so young can access drugs and drink the way she did….that someone could be such an animal ….to rape repeatedly a girl who was so drunk and drugged that she was unconscious…..and then leave her to die……
How much more are we going to degrade ourselves?? As humans….and everything around us seems to make us so immune……I am not pointing fingers at race, religion, place or country….just at the animals that men and women have become….. and just that the occurrences have become so frequent, that we don't even bat an eyelid……
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