Culture Shock

However so prosperous we become, whatever so good we do, it still is our responsibility to live each day better than the previous one, to respect the one in front and moreso - the one behind you. But what happened in Mangalore and was so horrifically captured in camera is a shame and a blot on our national character.

I usually refrain from writing about issues other than my immediate own, nature and forests and traveling. However, the audacity with which the attackers chose to direct their attacks towards hapless women is our collective shame. India, they say is a great culture but what I would think is it is a culture in severe stages of decay. And it was best exemplified by that afternoon in Mangalore.

Often, several evils work as a computer does - through multitasking, the computer relegates the one programme that is not of immediate concern to the background. Similarly, several evils in a line causes the stale news to fade into obscurity. But that should not happen in this case. It was an affront that does not parallel and has made me realise that as long as we respect our women, we would be still insulated from the degradation that is setting into us. I am not pure myself and have committed grave errors through life whether be it be fighting with my sister or mother or Samita - this incident makes me realise the follies of any kind of misbehaviour shown towards women.

I am not a political commentator but there is a growing intolerance in a society that is already ( inspite of confluencing attitudes) largely heteregenous and easily prone to disruptions in its fabric, as has been evident through centuries. It does not make sense to evoke traditions that basically value positive interpretations rather than jingoistic manifestations of outrage. Traditions does not proscribe asking others to follow your dictum and this is the larger challenge we face. This is the question I ask them and I ask myself, especially when they, me and you cross the line in order to bring others into homogenous thought processes as yours. It is always possible for them to understand that forcing others to follow your path is just not done in the modern sense............ I wish that this attack be seen as a watershed and severe punishments offered to the people behind it. It may be too late for the rest to convince these people into an attitudinal change as they already are fixed on the their idea of power that is non-reversible.