Two Days of Mayhem. One Long Weekend.

Two days of mayhem. One long weekend. That is what most of last week turned out to be. One moment we are at office, trying to beat deadlines, and the next there is news of veteran Kannada acting legend Dr. Raj Kumar's death. The violence that this single event triggered off was staggering, by any standards. Staggering because of the senselessness of it all. The end result? Deaths, and hundreds of thousands of rupees worth of property damaged.

This is something I have not been able to figure out: the mentality of a mob; to be more specific, the trigger for this phenomenon. There is no other word for it except 'phenomenon'. A normal person, in the company of a few emotionally overcharged others, turns into a violent beast, breaking things, beating other innocents, taking lives. It happened in Gujarat - the memories are frightening - and we said how could one man do this to another? Especially women and children? Now we have seen it with our own eyes how one man does this to another.

Something snaps. Maybe there are political connotations to the whole thing, in which case one can imagine the mindset of our elected representatives that were ousted from power, and are currently the opposition. For this is not even political mileage, this is criminal behavior. That at least is something, in the sense, however weird it may sound, that there is an agenda to the whole thing. But if it was not politically motivated, then what? It is a tragedy, to see with our own eyes, that this is what we the common people can become.

As a spectator, as one who hasn't been directly affected, I can afford to curse and swear, maybe even be insensitive enough to laugh about how stupid people can be. What about the people who have been directly affected? Who have had people scale their compound walls and things smashed up? What about the families of people that lost their lives? The family of the police constable, all of 28 years old, who died, after the public got hold of him and literally beat the life out of him? Who do we hold responsible? What happens to the concept of accountability?

Sadly, that is how life is in India. Accountability has been non-existent, almost, in our day to day lives. Once in a while a celebrity does something stupid, makes the headlines, gets punished in the name of accountability, spends a few days in prison, a la The Simple Life, gets out of jail with all the fanfare possible, and then goes on to make movies, beat up people, make threats, make money, screw around more.

This is India, and this is how it will remain, no matter how much of an economic giant we metamorphose into, how much of progress we make.

[P.S: Raj Kumar's family, by the way, apparently could not make it to be near the body during the final rites. What more can one say?]