The world sleeps through… doped, drugged as lives are torn apart all around. Life goes around more or less normally even as Kashmir burns. A fate shared by the north-east and practically every region where India shares its boundaries with another country. Heck! even down south, where the “sharing” of boundaries is as frivolous as the Ram Setu (which itself is submerged under a layer of controversy thicker even than the surrounding waters), folks have had trouble of their own kind. Meanwhile, people elsewhere carry out their chores, blissfully unaware or rather consciously, steadfastly refusing to open their eyes to the doom of a dream that looms above.
A gross insensitivity you say? I believe that’s just a part of their survival instinct. Everyone finds a way; some choose to go out in style, guns blazing while some others duck for cover. One acts a hero, the other a statesman. And neither one is better off, for they have common fates.
Resilience is the key to our survival through ages. It is the ability of the human body and more importantly the spirit to emerge stronger and wiser through every misfortune, be it force of nature or a devilry wrought by human minds. Over time wounds are healed and hurts forgotten. And as an added safety measure an immunity is developed – a layer of indifference that thickens with every such recurrence. Consequently, no soul is stirred with reports of an act of depravity. The news is served in a matter-of-fact tone and is swallowed down the throat with a draught of morning tea, unchewed, untasted. Staple.
But what of those who choose to remember their pain. A pain borne out of unjust punishment and humiliation. Their wounds healed long ago, but they still bear these scars as a mark of their shame. This pain that feeds them gives them the strength to bear a perversion so severe that they descend intentionally into the same wretchedness they have come to detest. And like a pathogen, these men of violence grow. They breed and flourish on the very wreck they wrought, giving birth to newer grievances and consequently more tortured souls. Locked forever in this vicious chain – the makers of destroyers with their own creations.
Yet everything has a reason for its being: Pain helps us understand each other. And just as it enables a person to condescend to the depths of degeneracy, it helps one transcend the barriers of space and time to feel the suffering of another. To share someone’s grief one must have felt the very sting; only the memory of the pain instills in us a semblance of sensitivity. It is true after all that these thoughts have occurred to me only in my current state of wretched existence. Nothing like grief to bond people together. Is that why the Alcoholics Inc. form the closest, most trusting circles, I wonder…
Everyday, as we play our parts, live and interact with others, we tread this fine line between resilience and indifference, often unsure to which side we belong. A strong heart after all, is not necessarily a hard one.
