A major terrorist attack shakes the country, hundreds die and thousands cry while you and me sit in the comfort of our drawing rooms and express our sadness, our contempt, our disapproval and our shock in the light of the events that occurred. The television set continues to blare and news channels flash the story several times over. The anchor sits down with a number of eminent panellists: those few enlightened minds of our country, to discuss the problem. A heated debate ensues where most of the opinions belong to that of the anchor and a verdict is meted out: our nation is absolutely unsafe and our government is nothing but a bunch of incompetent imbeciles. When all that talking starts to get onto our nerves, we change the channel to watch a bunch of women, who are heavily clad in make-up and are crying their lungs out, only because it is definitely more entertaining for us.
A girl gets raped and the same thing follows, oh in fact, we also endeavour to make her identity public so that people can recognize her as she walks down the streets the next time and say: ”dekho, iss bechari ka rape hua tha”. We take part in anti- corruption movements to fight the system and help purge the country of its wrongdoers and we do so by shelling out thirty bucks and flaunting a ‘I am Anna‘ and a ‘I am Arvind‘ cap. We ‘like’ photos of underprivileged kids and women who have been abused, on Facebook only because our ‘likes’ will help them attain a better life. We watch atrocities being committed against people who did not really deserve the same and go on and on about how it breaks our heart to see the plight of our nation.
We talk, deliberate, debate and discuss and expect the problem to be solved automatically. We label politics as dirty, but nobody really cares to clean up that dirt and when someone, out of a billion people makes an effort to do so, we make sure we criticize every action of that person and make him/her feel like a total loser. It would then not be wrong to label ourselves as a bunch of hypocrites as we are all adept at using big words and slinging mud at those in authority, but when it comes to acting and going out there to transform the system, our legs start to wobble and our speech starts to slur.
Another city shall blow up soon, another girl will be molested in broad daylight, more money shall be laundered and more people shall go to sleep on an empty stomach. The same cycle of talking and doing nothing shall continue, I shall probably be writing another such article for you to read and you will be scrolling through the post the way you are doing right now. Because that’s how we like to work. For us, everything is constant, but change. Hypocrisy runs in our blood and ignorance is one friend we would never want to part with.