April, T.S.Eliot had said, was the ‘cruelest month’-well September 2008 would easily wrest the title, having been an uncharacteristically brutal one. It brought several questions to mind about the proud slogan India shining as, time and again, we were forced to stop in this business called living and wonder whether those were hollow, meaningless words.
" Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed….. "
The lines by another poet (a Nobel laureate like Eliot) W.B.Yeats, penned almost a century ago, seemed to come true prophetically last month, in a potently dark and menacing manner. Grisly tales of bloodbaths filled the newspapers, of senseless killings, where people were victimized because of their faith. The CEO of a reputed company was lynched on the office premises and no one could save him. There were terrifying bomb blasts- tearing through the fragile human illusion of security-spun erroneously by man- that snuffed out the lives of the young and the innocent. And tragically, and in the ultimate travesty of justice, the futile sacrifice of those who uphold law and justice at the risk of their lives- the fearless inspector, M.C .Sharma and the very young Santosh didn’t have to die, but they did: on different days at different locations but due to the same reason. Felled brutally at the hands of the cruelest creature created by God: man.
" The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity………………" wrote on the prescient poet-foretelling the ironic supercession of innocence by malevolent, negative forces. Today, we don’t know where to look for guidance, for direction. We’re moving like headless chicken in a coop: rendered timid and impotent by our immediate surroundings-where no one knows what the next moment has in store. Even the young and innocent are not spared in this meaningless mass slaughter. Intolerance and violence have made insidious entries into our blood stream; we’re just not ready to give way. At the smallest of pretexts, guns are pulled out, lives lost. The newspapers recently carried a report how a shop-keeper was shot dead as a customer’s mobile didn’t reflect the hundred rupee recharge that had been made! And such bizarre stories are the rule, not the exception. On an average, the third page has similar, gory tales (only-and sadly enough- they are facts) every single day, making one wonder, afresh, whether the legendary wisdom and non-violence of the orient has been smothered in the crass materialism of the rest of the world. Where every dream of the great architects of the nation has been shattered, every cherished hope of the noble poets turned to dust:
Today the mind is always full of fear and the head often hangs with shame at what’s happening in the world around us. Thoughts of reason, wisdom and knowledge couldn’t be further from the mind when apprehension and uncertainty rule the roost. We avert our eyes if we see someone in distress and are afraid to stop by and help an accident victim-it could be staged, s/he could be faking it for dire criminal motives…….basic humanity and decency seem to be dying a slow death…….
But there’s hope yet-all is not lost, as the closing lines of the same poem suggest (hinting of better things to come) lifting the mind out of its pall of gloom as we feel that things cannot get any worse. They’ve reached the nadir, so now, they can only get uplifted. Some convoluted logic tells us that man cannot sink any lower, so he can only get better. Surely, some thing good is at hand and matters will improve-slowly but steadily?! Human values will be rescued from the oblivion they have disappeared into and the human spirit will triumph yet again.
It will be resuscitated and we’ll emerge out of this dark tunnel of despair, into bright, glorious sunlight. Surely?
