Heal the World

HEAL THE WORLD...

While the whole country is engulfed in this "anti-corruption" movement, led by Anna Hazare and team, where every person, coming from different walks of life, has made "Main Anna Hoon" the anthem of the movement. I wonder, how many of us, do accept that there are other problems, which exists in the society we live in, which, I am more than sure, each of us is aware of, but turn a blind eye towards.

Friday, August 26, 2011, early morning, my colleague, came and placed the "DNA" newspaper in front of me, the front-page of this newspaper carried a story of a father setting his three year old daughter ablaze. I am not sure, if there are enough words in English language to express the agony and anger, I felt, all in that one moment. Being a mother myself, all I could think was, how cruel can a person be, to commit such a heinous act.

Is it that humanity, has become an extinct trait? Have people forgotten what love and affection is? Has the world become so self-centered, that people are unable to bear even a temporary inconvenience caused, by your own child? Has any one of us ever stopped long enough to think, have these crimes increased rampantly today or did they always exist? Why is it, that you find people increasingly, becoming less tolerant, even towards their own loved ones?

Coincidentally, this gruesome incident had taken place, in the same locality as where my domestic help lives. I felt I should check with him, if he knew anything about this family. However, when I spoke to Dev (my domestic help) he said, he was not aware and for them such incidents had become a non-topic, which further depressed me. An innocent three year old was set ablaze only because she would not stop crying and to the people living around, it did not matter at all. In fact, he went on to tell me, "Madam, these things are very common in such slum dwellings. There is a lady in my neighbor-hood, who gives birth to children only to sell them away for hefty sums to the eunuch community." When I asked how much the hefty sum was, he replied Rs. 50,000. I felt shocked that a mother could set a price for her child. I looked, at my daughter who was playfully talking to my neighbour's son, who was playing with her, and I felt the warmth of my own tears, as to the kind of world we are giving to our children, as their inheritance. My thoughts shifted to those innocent children, who were given birth only to be sold, for the temporary benefit of a few paper notes (money), which seems to have become, the only important thing in this world, to the little children who were killed by their own parents, to those who were raped by some perverted individuals and to the hundred such victims, who had suffered and died in the most cruel circumstances, which we may not be able to fathom.

While the whole nation has come together to fight corruption, which is an important movement, I think it is high time, that as the citizens of this nation, we address such issues as well, which is somewhere again connected to the paper notes called "money". The fact that a section of our population is living in extravagance and another is existing, not knowing where the next meal is likely to come from, this inequality in the standard of living, is a prime reason for such unpleasant incidents. I am not propagating that all such incidents take place for this reason, but a lot of them do. There are a lot of capable people out there, whose capabilities go untapped because of lack of opportunities, mostly because they do not have the money to educate themselves, or did not get the guidance to do it.

There is a lot of frustration that builds up in the minds of people who are capable but are compelled to spend their lives in reckless living, because they are incapable of finding a path for themselves and do not get any guidance either, to find the right path. A lot of their issues are related to self-esteem, because in their minds they consider themselves to be all important, but that is not how the world looks at them. This leads to the development of low self-esteem, which they cover with false pride. Such issues develop because these individuals have not been guided in the right direction since their childhood. We cannot correct the harm that is already done beyond a point, but what we can do is not let the same mistakes be repeated with the new generation.

What I want to convey here is that as individuals, we all know people in and around us, who belong to the "lack of money" section of our society; we come across them every day, in some form or the other. Why not start being a little considerate, by giving back some of what