Prakash was like any other middle-class Indian. He was a young man in his early thirties. After completing his MBA from a prestigious management institute, he bagged a job in one of the biggest multi-national corporations. Happily married to his beautiful, young wife, he was the only earning member of his family. Recently the work pressure at his office was taking tall in his health, so he decided to visit a nearby Hospital. Doctors advised him, to put up a few days in a hospital. Since he could afford it, he went into one of the highly-paying hospitals in the city. His family was relieved that that now Prakash was in care of one of the best hospitals in the city. Suddenly just one day after they had admitted Prakash into the hospital, they received an official phone call from the hospital. There was a dramatic fire incident at the hospital and Prakash was one of those dead who died because of lack of breathing air.
Preethi was like any other middle-class Indian housewife. She loved her husband and their little girl of two. She loved to cook and often boasted about her cooking prowess to her neighbors. She loved watching those reality shows and soap operas. One day while playing with her little daughter, she met a small accident. The doctors, after some tests, assured her husband and the rest of the family, that it was just another small fracture at her feet. Some days rest and some treatment will cure her. The family admitted her in one of the most-costly hospitals in the city. Just one night after Preethi was admitted; her husband received a phone call from her around midnight. “Come quickly, there is a major fire here, I am unable to breathe” – those were the final words from Preethi before the call got disconnected. When her husband reached the hospital, he found her Preethi but she was lifeless at that time.
Malli was one of the three children from a small Kerala village. Her father was a small farmer and her mother was a house-maid. Both her elder brothers decided to move to the Gulf for jobs. One of them was a driver of a big oil-tycoon Sheikh in Kuwait city and another was working as a hotel waiter at an Italian restaurant in Bahrain. Malli herself after completing her formal education completed the nursing course and then got a nursing job in a big hospital in one of the metros. She was happy with her life when she was able to send a portion of her meager salary to her family back home. One night there was a huge fire in her ward, she did her best to rescue as many people as she could but the effects smoke and poisonous smoke ensured that Malli herself could not be saved.
Now all these three people, Prakash, Preethi and Malli were like any one of us. Their personal tragedies as tragic as they are will have a common ending. They will be on the headlines of the newspapers, commented upon excessively in the television channels and chatted around social network forums , political parties will try to score points over each other and then after some days and if they lucky may be for a week later they will turn into numbers.
When a personal tragedy just becomes another number, it losses the tragedy part of it. The personal loss becomes just another incident and the tragic end of the person behind that fades into oblivion. Numbers and facts do not deal with the amount of emotions involved or the severity of these tremendous personal losses. When we read about the tragedies of a girl like Malli or a youth like Prakash, we can relate ourselves with those tragedies because we know at the back of our minds that similar things can happen to us or may have already happened to our relatives, friends or some very close ones. When we read in the newspaper or Internet in a headline such as “89 people dies in fire accident”, we do not relate ourselves to it. It just remains what it is. It is a tragic fact but to most of us in the end it is only another piece of arithmetic.
That is the ultimate end that happens to all the tragedies. They turn into numbers. In India, there is no end to personal and collective tragedies. We die in hundreds and thousands through train accidents, communal riots, caste violence, fire incidents , consuming tainted alcohol , industrial accidents , committing suicide after the death of some famous political or film celebrity or after India losses to the arch-rivals in Cricket and myriad other ways.
But after all one thing is common in all these deaths. After sometimes, when the media and other instruments of the respectable civil society, are sure that they can extract more attention out of these personal tragedies, they very conveniently turn their focuses on some other tragedies. After all in a country like ours there is no dearth of tragedies.
Take few examples. How many amongst us can remember the names of those farmers who committed suicide last month since they were unable to pay their rising debts? How many of us can remember the names of those victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy? How many amongst us can remember the names of the Chasnala colliery disaster victims? As I write this, I can see a picture in a very famous Bengali language newspaper. I can see the dead bodies of people who died just days back after consuming tainted alcohol in the state being piled and stacked upon a cycle van as if they are heaps of garbage, needed to be disposed of. How many of their names and stories will we ever come to know?
May be the reason behind this apathy in India is that we are so numerous and disorganized as a people that we do not value much beyond our own lives. That could be one reason that when we hear tragedies like these we just do not care enough about these incidents.
Or may be in India we are too much prone to violence and death that we have resigned ourselves to the view that these tragedies are in fact a normal course of life. We see so many instances of violence and death all around us that we are immune to these horrific personal tragedies beyond a certain level. Or have we become just too individualistic to care about the deaths like these? I guess it is a combination of all these factors.
Every time such a tragedy occurs, we will condemn those who we think are behind all these, demand their punishments and then just as those events occurred we will go to the hibernation mood. After all, in India our toleration of tragedies such as those of Bhopal and Chasnala are legendary. So it will ensure that the fundamental causes behind those tragedies will never come to an end. Our tolerance will ensure that.
So after these tragic events, we will burn candles and promise “never again” and then go on to the perpetual hibernation until the next tragedy gives us the opportunity to burn candles and promise.
The names of the persons I have used in this article i.e. those of Prakash, Preethi and Malli, may or may not have any resemblance to reality. I used those names in the belief that uttering them for at least once more will ensure that at least some personal tragedies will be viewed as what they are i.e. real , terrible human losses and not mere numbers.
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