An unapologetic truth
Since the birth of knowledge and gossip, there has never been a dearth of horrific news. Our newspapers are full of them. And if that’s not enough, one can always go online to dive in to the depravity called humankind. Last week, a little girl in Pakistan was raped and murdered in a manner that forced the entire nation to grieve and demand justice. This week, something similar happened to another minor in Haryana. Words fall short. Such incidents and events aren’t unique though. We are angry and our anger is justified as much as it’s misguided because there are always people out there who simply don’t care. Except about themselves. They would be lurking somewhere trying their best to unfold a tragedy which won’t ever turn in to a comedy as tragedies are originally meant to. These individuals will accomplish their misdeeds whether the media manages to reach their victims on time or not. In the grand scheme of activity, what is sickening is how little have we changed as a society despite learning heinous nuggets about ourselves day in and day out.
Who is to be blamed remains an intriguing question: the person who commits such unmentionable crimes or the conditions enabling him to. Simply put, the person is to be blamed as we are, each one of us, responsible for our personal decisions and executions. But if we zoom out a bit, we’d realize the rot not only goes deeper but also spreads wider. We can put the rascal behind bars and get an psychology expert to break him/her. S/He could be asked all sorts of questions from a generic “Why did you do that?” to the tenacious “Do you have a problem with him/her or with him/her gender?”
This can go on and on.
By the end of it, we’d be assembling at a place we don’t want to. A place where nothing makes sense. Nobody has the answers as to why somebody might go to the extent that they do. It will be at this point where we’ll see the true colour of a given person. Nothing is what it seems. A perfectly normal individual can leave home at 8 in the morning claiming to go to work only to return at 5 in the evening after doing something nobody can be forgiven for.
A wise man once posited that only God forgives. The bigger doubt is — but whom?
