The Party is Outraged!!
(as our worlds collide)
Break the spine of the protest.
Whoever raises a finger break that hand.
Everybody who walks for the aggrieved walks against us.
What is this thing called conscience, when it is outraged when convenient.
Why be so shrill today, when the world has a murder every sixty seconds.
What was she? Just another woman.
Who is she to you? You were probably rude to her the other day.
What's it to you? Go back to your shell, your distractions, your sinecure.
How far will your shrill voice reach, you have a job to do, a life to live.
What's the use of this disruption, this vituperation? You're now marked for life.
You think you're in a crowd, there's safety in numbers? Come, I'll show you in a video-grab.
These songs, these poems, this outrage, the lies you hear are the stories you tell.
You've elected me, I now know the best. You make sure India win the next T20 match.
You'd promised your allegiance to the party. Where did your qualms figure in this at all?
You'd assured your allegiance to the party. Where did morality figure in this at all?
It's been a tumultuous few days.
According to WHO, one person is murdered every 60 seconds in this world. One person commits suicide about every 40 seconds. One person dies in armed conflict every 100 seconds.
And busy with our quotidian struggles, we let the numbers swirl around our consciousness before slipping away. Until one day, our blasé conscience finds something which goes beyond even our overburdened shock meter.
And in strange infinitesimal ways, our world shifts.
Something inside us breaks - and something else breaks open. The overwhelming feeling that a public tragedy is a personal visitation, beyond a dining table conversation, starts to haunt us. The tragedy becomes our own.
We want to go beyond the pale of our usual cynicism - "what will change? what can change?" - and want to demand change.
Of course, the patient procrastination of officialdom, the slow overtures of bureaucracy, the survival instincts of political whataboutery kicks in - as do attempts to wear us down.
And we understand the strategies, we know how we will grow angrier and progressively frustrated - and our lives will begin to call, our duties will come to the fore. Our livelihoods will begin to be at stake - and we do give up. But we don't give in.
For we know the long game too.
Along the years we have also learnt the power of giving the long rope. We know that beyond the immediate sufferance, there are a few knockout blows which we hide beneath our sleeves. The streets, the polls, protests, poems, a non-cooperation movement, emptying halls where they speak, refusing their doles, walking out in the middle of speeches, a continual call to conscience.
Beyond the pale of greed and corruption, which we all see and bear on a daily basis, we unite ourselves from cynicism, of not giving up because struggles often take years, maybe generations. We ensure that the blow is significant, and political parties, for years to come, will remember that those who bring them to power can never ever be taken for granted.
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Love your last sentence. I’ve watched the unfolding protests numbly telling myself that at least there’s outrage now…
Yet I want to see more. A lot more. Much more than what Nirbhaya wrought! That feels so long ago. I kind of went, “again?” I find myself wanting not just direct and swift justice (death penalty came to my mind—even when I don’t support it, especially where evidence is so easily tampered with) meted out to the perpetrators but for everyone who contributed to the proximate causality, who treated her safety lightly, who allowed it to happen on those premises... That’s what I hope will come off this. Will it?
Brilliant outrage 😠 👏 👏 👏