Obsessed With Something Alien

I was just like you, comfortable in my imaginary pupae of security, sweetly slumbering on without a care in the world till things began to take an ominous turn. Of course I had heard the rumble of distant battles in my sleep. I had seen smoke rising from Kashmir, Assam, Gorkha land, Punjab and other places and had wondered what was happening at those places. But they seemed definitely far away and I was still confident of my pupae of protection. There was something curious in those infrequent intrusions too; they seemed inching nearer and nearer every time that I became aware of them.

Then on one fine morning the racket of terrible explosions and rat-tat of machine gunfire suddenly broke into my consciousness. I realized with a horrifying sense of reality that it was happening in our midst. My sweet reverie was shattered, and I had to sit up and take notice. Scales fell from my eyes and I began to see things as they were. The pupae of safety were a myth, I realized. There has never been any such safety at all. I saw myself standing undefended in my own land, being ridiculed by the world. It was a revelation that was stunning and immediate. I saw weak willed people all around me and their mawkishness.

I thought, this could not be happening in this land, we are a democratic people, we are a peaceful people, we had survived for centuries believing in the right to be free from inhibitions, both internal and external. We have been a resilient race; our history has not been a bed of roses. We have suffered physical and mental dominations. We came through all that.

We knew that pride was folly. We have been surviving from time immemorial in this land. Yes we have committed mistakes. Our racial consciousness was riddled with a weakness we created ourselves. The weakness of loving every one, the weakness of heeding to every point view that is there and accepting there is some truth in every such view, the weakness of assimilating rather than discarding.

Where are those niceties now? The Hindu, Muslim and the Christians had lived here side by side visiting each others shrines, bowing before each others gods and divinities. Living near each other and exchanging pleasantries. We had fought, yes I admit we had even cut each others throat, but that was all in heat of the moment when emotions got hold of us. They were not sane acts. They were the results of the crazy moments of our social life. We soon forgot all that and returned to our normal lives.
We were one, though divided, though quarrelling with each other, though antagonistic towards every intrusion into our core beliefs. We had the oneness to keep a giant democracy alive. We were no mean performers in the world stage if only for the wonderful effort we put up to protect this loose, flawed, but still functioning democracy. That needed certain strength, certain integrity, and certain traits of character which are inherently intelligent.

We were careful to defeat all efforts at autocracy; we sensed rather than observed the decay in the system and responded. But we have lately become lax. We have allowed desultory elements to come up. We shut our eyes when our young were turning away from the main stream of the society into isolated emotional planes and were ruminating destruction of the very ground they were standing on. They had become obsessed with something alien, something lasting and unforgiving.

We shut our eyes. We turned a blind eye towards the rising fog of insensitive hatred which was obliterating everything fine from our young.

We have failed to teach them that they can’t cut down the very branch they were sitting on. They have lost bearings and purpose. It’s a kind of ennui that has possessed now. They just don’t care if the world goes rot.

And their and our world is going rot.