Weapon of murder is callousness,
apathy, a characteristic disregard for human life. These deaths are not
accident or fate but murder by well-nourished system orchestrating against
vulnerable. Time and place keep shifting but the template of gross violation on
life continues. The play of blessedness and fate is iterated as eternal and a lesson.
A cyclical nature beyond our control, so it is cleverly posited as nothing to do
with corruption, greed or criminal negligence, even with evidence they are
brushed aside or undermined with alacrity, the sinister system is too seeped
into soul that it is incapacitated to be reformed. It is cunningly appropriated
as fate and an occasion to drivel into people their precarious existence. The
only option presented with much fanfare and testimonial from sideshow celebrities
and attention seeking dopamine is to better your fate. Here too are charlatans
ready with ritual of solutions to fleece. Since fate is death and misery while
blessedness is money and power so this stampede to acquire, capture, grab, by
whatever means. In this skewed degraded system, that conceives every occasion
as an opportunity to make money and increase power and influence, majority are
fated to be crushed while few emerge as winners to be emulated as lessons on
inspiration. There is rarely any moment of self-reflection since critical
foundation of society (religion/tradition/market/culture/relations/elders) is
compromised and streamlined to serve these aspirations of success. Thus, the
richest beggars and most powerful beggars are compelling role models for
aspiring beggars. They provide meaning by compulsive exhibitionism of their
shallow vacuous lives to enthusiasts incapacitated of any discerning skills or
nuanced understanding whatsoever. This self-consuming loop is fed by institution
under the garb of freedom and choice. These infect every aspect of life whether
education, entertainment, art, spiritual or leisure. Nature, environment,
humans, animals, are transactional in this worldview and its value to be
assigned in the matrix of benefit. Every possibility of better human being is
reduced and aggregated to means of intense social mobility of gathering power,
money and influence. This journey, the desperation and final accomplishment of
goals, is what makes life story simple and easy to understand. Complexities and
vibrancy of living is rarely attempted, if ever, as minor sideshow, detour,
character fault, to main story -established life pattern. The mind is cherished
in juvenile, intellect celebrated in adolescent glories. What possibility do
you see of such a society?
Three youngsters drowned (few
days back one was electrocuted) and died horrible deaths trapped in shops tailormade
to lowest evaluation of education. They were milch end of horrible operators
including greedy authorities, irresponsible administrators, fleecing property
dealers and hawkers of short cut knowledge. Almost three decades back I was in
the same situation. I stayed about 100m away from the scene of tragedy, I know
the place very well, the horrible value system and transactional objectified
deals of greed, abject neglect, an overwhelming sense of insecurity at every
turn (carefree youthfulness probably helped). Water clogging and drowning the
area is not uncommon in this place (I recall a neighborhood boy washed away in
the drainage few feet away from where I resided -an intensely polluted, noisy
and congested locality, it affected me deeply and I really couldn’t sleep for
few days until they found the body -essentially skeleton about a week later,
had a sense of closure), so the claim that those who constructed new posh glittery
building, as a façade to churn money by trapping the hapless, were not aware of
recurring flooding in the area and so conveniently allowed basement into paid libraries
of death trap are deceitful awful people an essential abstraction of
characteristic values that define these cesspool of humanity -not that all are
nasty I knew some wonderful people too but these were almost always exceptions.
I too was an extremely vulnerable
youngster very much enmeshed in the degraded system, a simple pawn with no inkling
of sinister forces at play. Not much reading, brought up in simple worldview,
good thing for me was unlike other youngsters I really had no much aspiration (it
wasn’t really thought driven but since I was messed up and would get things
wrong hence the idea of trying within the defined didn’t work, and what I liked
didn’t matter), when people were planning future of going abroad and corporate
jobs I took the decision of moving to Chennai (then madras) ostensibly for
‘career’ but really I was tired of sunset at beach and wanted to see sunrise
every day and that is precisely what I did! Those were my motivation. Very soon
I realized “preparing for competitive exam” was an excellent strategy to immune
oneself from surrounding, so from ‘preparing for MBA’ I stumbled upon ‘preparing
for civil services’ quite accidently and found that it was long drawn out hence
perfectly suiting my singular struggle to be left alone. I was quite a slow
reader but what I read I found extremely interesting. Frankly I wasn’t into any
matrix of power aspirational career or ambition to prove ‘intelligence’ that
motivates these kind of career but somehow along the way reading became a motivation
(lot of time in the name of ‘preparation for exams’ suited me immensely which
slowly but deliberately led to serious reading, quite surprising shift since my
recent obsessions were war comics), very soon I forgot about these exams and
was reading beyond, and so shifted to compelling world of fiction, and soon
realized I had lot to read meanwhile searched for reading related jobs and then
finally to part time jobs that didn’t consume me (now that itself is another
parallel struggle of skilling in public speaking, play act so on). Concentration
was not a problem but shifting it from making spitbubbles, and let it land on
page and rounding the random word, to reading was a challenge! Soon reading
became central to my being, and for about three years I was just reading and
reading the better and best. I used to shock people by saying “man you can
murder someone if you want but don’t forget to read good book a week, and when
you read good books you realize murder is futile, a waste of time!”, everybody
is in existential mess. Realizing appalling limitedness of Indian writers, I
was into best of the world, soon became a discerning reader. It is about this
time I got the urge to write. I never really got a sentence right in my life,
and I messed up everytime and so very soon gave up the idea of writing as too
farfetched unachievable framework (framework are nuanced understanding and
works on increasing probables unlike binary crass ideas of target or goal), but
the urge to write was strong (it is not to be mistaken for motivation and fall
into regrettable self-help industry cliché), very much fueled by overwhelming self-assuredness
of mediocre Indian writing, and so I wrote a paragraph every day and compared
with master writers so on. So, from reading, to writing, to public speaking, as
also interacting with strangers was a struggle, I somehow worked it fairly
well. I took up jobs that gave steady income for daily expense without
consuming time, and gave me lot of free time to explore as also gave impetus to
pursue jobs that were entirely new and interesting. I even tried HR related
nonsense called personality development. I took it for fun and soon realized
they pay huge amount but found it stale, superficial and against my value
system. I stumbled into Civil service interview only a decade back, and found
it immensely interesting as it needed depth of knowledge (as also suited my
middle age increasingly bored mistaken for stern demeanor). This helped me to channelize
the latest innovation, expand my understanding and finetune my reading. I also
realized that like ‘preparing for exams’, after certain age, people voluntarily
leave you alone! It is extremely gratifying in an intrusive crude society,
ofcourse the context shift is from hopeful to hopeless that never really
bothered me.
The intention of writing these is
to show that apathy by responsible makes life miserable for vulnerable, it
leads to death and misery. Vulnerability leads to anxiety hence the system must
not only be responsible but empathetic. A primitive society degrades and restricts
choices for youngsters, it straight jackets life into narrow degraded deal. It makes
it immensely difficult, therefore takes enormous effort, to find oneself. Most
are not able to and gobbled up by insouciant negligence, many are oppressed in
the weight of the struggle and taper off into vacant life. In rare instances
the oppressive system can create positives. I never ever thought I will take up
writing (and people around me still don’t know I do write), and I am able to
express myself the way I want to is immensely satisfying meanwhile tighten some
screws and hit some nuts to work the complacent.
