Mirza Ghalib wrote, “Dil Hi To Hai, Na Sangokhisht, Dard Se Bhar Na Aaye Kyon?” Ghalib felt that the human heart was full of pathos, unlike an insensitive stone brick structure.
I wonder whether Ghalib was right.
Two days ago Times Now repeatedly ran a news clip. A man was being beaten mercilessly at the Vadodara station. The man, a ticket checker, was bleeding profusely, crying for help and trying to protect himself with his bare arms. Cut to the shot of another man, who was very happily running towards the ticket checker for another assault. Cut to the shot of the ticket checker being hit on the head with a boulder, streams of blood turning his white shirt to a deep crimson. Cut to the shot of onlookers who appeared to be enjoying the agony of the hapless ticket checker.
Few years ago, I noticed a crowd of about fifty people curiously looking in a particular direction at the Kanpur railway junction. The centre of attraction was a lunatic walking on the roof of a railway bogie. The naked man was precariously close to the high tension wires that power the electric locomotives. After striding confidently for a few minutes, the man stopped and stretched his limbs. His hands touched the wire, there was a deep thud, and the man collapsed. If the man was not dead, he was surely unconscious with the near lethal dose of high voltage electric current. Worse, he had started sliding down from the curved roof. By this time some police jawans had arrived. They waited for the body to fall from a height of four metres. And it did fall eventually. The naked man soon lay sprawled between two railway tracks. The two jawans swung into action. Holding a hand each of the dying man, they made him stand, climbed over the platform, and made him walk, perhaps right up to the thana. The crowd found the spectacle of a naked man walking between two uniformed policemen funny, breaking into laughter, hooting and clapping.
I am still unable to forget the footage of an injured man being lifted through his broken arm during the Mandal agitation about twenty years ago. The man died within minutes.
Why does man treat man in such a despicable way? What makes us relish the discomfort of others? It it true that under the garb of civilisation hides a beast within us, waiting to be released at the slightest opportunity?
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