Some people add value to life,
their own as well as others’. Some people do just the opposite: suck and drain.
There are also quite many who just watch indifferently, may be helplessly. Some
are busy living while others are busy dying, in other words.
There is always enough pain
and sadness around. You don’t need to go to the slums in the big cities to see
the wretchedness of life. You see it everywhere, especially these days when a
pandemic has been holding us hostage for long.
As Albert Camus says in his
classical novel, “What’s natural is the microbe. All the rest – health,
integrity, purity – is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must
never falter.”
The microbe is natural. The
virus is an ineluctable part of the nature. It nibbles away at the core of
human vitality. Its very function – raison d'être – is to suck and drain. It is
our duty, human duty, to keep the virus under control. With constant vigilance.
“The good man,” to return to Camus again, “the man who infects hardly anyone,
is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.”
Where have all the good men
disappeared? Why is Diogenes unable to put down his lantern and take rest?
How many Gauri Lankeshes and
Narendra Dabholkars, how many Kalburgis and Pansares, must lay down their lives
before the torchbearers of ancient civilisations realise that the real light is
what we create here and now and not the flickers of ossified history in the
fossils of myths and legends? How many innocent and honest seekers must face
charges of sedition before the government realises that power is a
responsibility to care for the entire country and not for a faction?
How many roads must a man walk
down before you call him a man?
Bob Dylan sings dolefully, “The
answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.”
As long as the answer only
keeps blowing in the wind, a lot of people will keep themselves busy dying
instead of living. A lot will just keep watching, callously, may be helplessly.
A Sanjiv Bhatt languishing in a jail doesn’t inspire anyone even to murmur like
the rustling leaf in a breeze that the king is indeed naked. Naked, in spite of
the varied costumes – the motley – he dons and doffs as he pleases.
Babu Bajrangi will remain a
national hero. Remember him?
He was the lynchpin behind the
2002 Gujarat riots which secured Modi’s political stature in the country. He
was caught on camera by Tehelka magazine in 2007 boasting about his
proximity to Modi and saying, “We didn’t spare a single Muslim shop, we set
everything on fire, we set them on fire and killed them … hacked, burnt, set on
fire… because these bastards say they don’t want to be cremated.” [The video is
still online.]
He was arrested years after he
committed the heinous crimes. He was convicted of the murder of 97 people. Yet
he was released last year on bail because of alleged health reasons. Can there
be more dangerous viruses than people like him?
Yet people like him are heroes
today. What has he contributed to his society but hatred? Some call that hatred
‘national pride’. Well, what do names matter in a country where hardcore
criminals call themselves Yogi and Sadhvi and so on.
I have two pet kittens whose
names are Antony and Cleopatra.
PS. Inspired by Indispire Edition 343: Some people are busy living while others are busy dying. What would
you like to tell either or both of these categories? #LiveFully
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