People Love To Hate

As I grow older and as I see things happening in my society, I've begun to realize that "People Love To Hate". Anything goes wrong and they take out all their hatred and anger against someone. I cannot take a better example for this than the recent Mumbai blasts. Something has gone terribly wrong and what do people do? They curse the politicians and blame the Indian Intelligence Agencies. They see Ram Gopal Varma at the blast site the next day and they begin to call him names. I am still in two minds whether a movie on something such as the Mumbai blasts should be made but I definitely doubt if it was really necessary at this point of time to make his visit to the the blast site a national issue?

My father is a doctor and he gets to see people from different walks of life as part of his profession. Recently I got to know of an incident which has literally shocked me. It seems a well-off Marvadi business family had recently approached my father telling him that the menstural cycle of their 12-year daughter had recently started and they would like to stop it for a couple of months. My father was slightly surprised and asked them the reason. They told him that their daughter was getting married in a couple of weeks, and if the groom's parents got to know that her periods had started, they would double the dowry. Therefore to avoid the extra dowry costs, they needed to stop her periods for sometime. What surprised me was not the fact that dowry and child marriages are so rampant, but the fact that such practices exist in a developed city and within a reasonably rich community.

Yet another incident about a child being bitten to death by red ants in a government hospital (http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/09/stories/2008120960521100.htm) shows how bad things are in our society. Probably there might be some other cause for the death of the child but I won't be surprised if the red ants were the cause for the death of the three-day old infant.

With reference to my peers (w.r.t economic status), I think most of us are blessed with good education, proper shelter, loving parents and definitely a hefty salary job. We work in comfortable environments, sleep in A/C rooms, party on weekends and keep growing our personal investments. And do you know what is this blessed life doing to all of us? It is making us insensitive to the problems faced by the underprivileged. We all curse the politicians and blame the law breakers. But I really don't know how different are we from them. After all as soon as we are done cursing the politicians and empathizing with the victims, we just get back to what we are doing and forget about it (like the false promises made by politicians who forget them the moment they are elected). And I am sure that a lot of us would have been offenders ourselves had we been born in a poor family.

Our society is plagued with many problems and social evils. Being financially well-off we generally don't face many of these problems or we can find affordable solutions for our problems. There is a lot of inequality in our society. One might argue that we are paying taxes to the government but it is clear that while we still get to take away huge sums of money, there are many who don't have access to basic facilities such as health services and education.

My simple question to all of us is this - Apart from blaming and cursing and saying that things are terribly wrong, in what way are we directly or indirectly contributing to making our society a better place to live in?
Yes it is true that our politicians are corrupt and that our Intelligence has failed. And I also don't say that one shouldn't look for personal comfort or for future investment. But are we doing our bit to help the people who are not as privileged / blessed as us to hope for a better future?

My deepest condolences go out to the victims of the Mumbai blasts. While I might not have in any way been directly linked to it, in a very indescribable way, I somehow feel responsible for their deaths because I feel I have not given back enough to the society in return for what I have received from it. May the souls of the blast victims rest in peace.