Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Looking up at the sky I often wonder whether there’s really some power up there or is it just an unending expanse, with nobody in particular except a strange hollowness of sorts, and all those myths of His existence, of His outreach, of His immense powers. I’d been indulging in this practice for years but it has gained momentum now in recent months. In fact, every night I gaze out,look at the sky with a great intensity and fall flat on the bed, with that same old question bothering me — if there’s someone out there why doesn’t He react to the ironical happenings around, affecting the hapless.
For instance, there were hundreds rendered homeless or burnt alive in the lanes and by-lanes of Ahmedabad and yet their official murderer continues to sit atop that high chair, within those gaudy official frills. No sign of regret and remorse, as carnage victims move about like diseased cattle, getting hounded out from those camps which, anyway, resembled concentration camps. Even as a carnage survivor rattles off his name together with that of his henchmen (the civil servants under his command — bureaucrats and police personnel) not one of them has been picked up or kicked about — by the state or even by that so-called power up there in that clear blue sky. In another state capital, the way was cleared last fortnight for the coronation of the new heir — a young man who is often photographed hugging his two sons, whilst at any given moment veiled mothers go about in that very place, looking for their young sons — lost in the thick maze of those unending political games at work, where intense interrogation is merely a foretaste of the actual end. In fact, Srinagar could be termed a strange city, in the sense it is here that the remains of a dead man are guarded round the clock though those actually alive are hounded into towards camps or into sheer timelessness.
And though killings are taking place all over the world, here it is shrouded in hypocrisy of the worst order — under the banner of religion, so much so that the man who kills would be seen praying the very next moment. Keep moving from one state capital to the next and human rights violations frighten you. We have begun to take it as part of our system, as part of everyday life, as part of our so-called democracy.
Meanwhile, why does somebody out there sit unmoved? Scripted verses of justice, wrath on the evildoer seem so very futile because there’s little justice coming from those divine quarters. If there’s a Somebody out there why doesn’t he react and react now?
