The Great Indian Tragedy

Oh! There we go again. Just 42 this time; and that's exactly the way it looks. When you have 1.14 Bn.; whats 42?

I always wonder at the plight of the human being in India. Is she (with all respect to the He included) just a number? - like saying "Hi, I'm No. 1,147,995,904" , with the next in serial order standing to be counted in the next 1.5 seconds. Is she a vote? Is she something like a cow in the stall waiting for the next subsidy or loan write-off? What do you think the great Indian is?

Yesterday saw the next in the chain of tragedies we live everyday - there is the normal run over by a bus, run over by a train, hooch tragedies, murders, building collapses, fires, all the flues you can think off - bird, swine and what not; viral infections in multiple forms and then the once-in-a-while boat capsize that make you stand up and cry foul again. And this last one has now started taking a special liking for My Own Country; it can't be God's, can it?

The other day it was in Komarakam, then some other place where 16 children were lost and now Thekkady. I hear the standard excuses of all the people went to one side to see the animals, all the people climbed on top for a better view, the driver was turning the boat around in the same direction - all what else - but is there any excuse for loosing a life?

The tragedy of the highest order, of immense magnitude - and a worse future, which will forget in no time, the enquiry commission, its usually sensible reports, the perpetrators (I can't imagine a boat so unworthy of water was commissioned - therefore the manufacturer, inspector, administrator should be included as perpetrators) will all be forgotten or brushed under the carpet - because no one is interested and the wrongdoers ought not to be punished.

Where is India's readiness in the face of disaster? Who would tie safety rings at such a position that they are not accessible in emergency? Why are life jackets locked up and saved in the plastic they were bought in? Why aren't people educated on basic precautions and emergency response action? Why can't all those on such boat trips be made to wear a safety jacket for the couple of hours they are out on the water? Why were those windows of the lower deck sealed off with no emergency exist? Why would a boat topple over; whatever be the weight distribution?

Do we have to go through these horrors day after day and yet never learn? Shouldn't we grow up as a nation / civilization and advance to a level of having communication systems, safety mechanisms and procedures that a in the minimum becoming of this day and age? When will this ever happen?

I fret for this nation. I'm flustered that a human life could be treated so insignificantly. I cry for all those people - their hearts of love broken. I fear all those nightmares, born anew to the world. I wonder. I pity myself that all I do is sit here and crib. Am I just a number? Isn't that what I am??

Someday, Oh! the day, we should get there. I smell it in the wind, in fleeting moments that don't seem real. But one day we should get there. Amen.