Skip to main content

Is Hell overflowing?

 

Image from here

When French philosopher and Nobel Laureate, Jean-Paul Sartre, wrote that hell is other people, he didn’t mean that Hell had become full and the devils had started spilling out on to the earth. He meant we are the devils. We are the devils to one another.

“When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth,” says a character in a Hollywood movie (if I remember correctly). This is the theme for this week’s Indispire. Is Hell really overflowing? This is a question that struck me recently when I read about how my compatriots behave these days towards fellow human beings in the name of weird ideology (which is in practice a ploy for grabbing whatever wealth is left with the minority communities and Dalits). But I know that it’s not the ghosts of the dead that walk around here now raping and killing little children, assaulting people in the name of non-existent spirits, spending enormous amounts on concrete structures some of which will do no good to anyone eventually, pushing millions of people into starvation, throwing many of them out from their homes…

There’s this man, for example, who lives in a 27-storey-palace but is discontented. For his sake, the impoverished millions of Indians will keep paying higher prices for petroleum products day after day. He sits in the 27th storey and dreams of the 28th. Not really. I’m speaking metaphorically. He doesn’t have to dream. He can materialise any dream instantly because the powers are with him. He is the power. It is for a few individuals like him that the country formulates policies nowadays. Look at who has been given charge of the cooperative banks in the country now. It’s nothing short of handing over the keys of the banks to the expert in heist.

They stole everything from the citizens. They stole jobs, lands, businesses, cattle, poets, rebels, dreamers and our dreams, sweat and blood. What is left anymore to suck? Metaphorically we have become a nation of vampires and their victims.  

 

Comments

  1. wow sir..it is by far the only writing that sparked a fire in me😁..thank you for this

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wish to light gentle diyas, not fire. But unfortunately my government sets fire to my neurons.

      Delete
  2. Hari OM
    Even demons require a leader - his name is Satan... and yes, it boils the blood of those of us who would wish them chased back into their little canyons... (as the Universal Me cries out that all have their place, the little human I am cannot abide how such as the 27th floor bloke gets away with it...) YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That bloke not only gets away with it but he is the king of India. The government is at his beck and call. All the bravado displayed by the Duo is only for the naive...

      Delete
  3. The process of wringing us dry is continuing. Wonder for how long though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Let's hope it won't go beyond 2024. No guarantee about that given the popularity enjoyed by the Duo. India won't be the old India anymore, that's sure.

      Delete
  4. That man has thrived under all governments.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, he's a chameleon. Party colors don't matter to him.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...