The March

Sometimes i wonder if this City is for real. I feel like the picture, blurred. Like everyone knows what they are doing, but no one does anything in context with the next person. And it never matches. And all in all its total chaos. Anarchy. Whats happening to this place? How do some people get away with so much? Who makes the rules? Who lets them make rules? Why do we need rules? And why, inspite of rules, is there such a mess?

So here we are in the middle of nothingness. You would think stillness is peaceful, but look around you. Look into squalid state hospitals, into dysfunctional PA systems, into 4-way road crossings, into the eyes of the unrest youth atop garish tempos shouting slogans they can barely pronounce. Look a little further into editorial offices struggling to get the most shocking punchline, into tired reporters misquoting, misrepresenting and generally unaware of whose side they are on, into eerie empty streets during rush hour traffic, into squadron guarded official buildings threatening to burst forth in malice and hate.

And who suffers? Not you or me, even though we may pretend to be pained by what is going on around us. Not the intellectual creme of the City who have denounced their association with the state. Not the people waving scarlet flags and burning down buses in the middle of daylight in the metropolis of the world's largest democracy. Not the men and women in starched ujala-white cotton clothes whose lives revolve around making a thousand visions and revisions while the world crumbles around them. Not the hundreds of people who follow them around and claim to be fighting for a dying cause, and who can, in the same breath demolish antique furniture and civilized living.

No, the ones who suffers are those whose names we either dont know, or are mispelt and misplaced time and again by reporting agencies and by others claiming justice. What they end up as is just another statistic for the state to mull over for a week or two before something else comes up, preferably something more spine-chilling, and preferably something by the Opposition (well, we must take turns you know!) Until then, we dont go to work, we deny other daily labourers of their daily meal, we protest by burning down a BDO and throwing eggs inside the parliament, we refuse to listen, we refuse to speak, we scream from the rooftops and megaphones about the barbaric injustice that has happened, cite name after name, attract media attention, disrupt the last vestiges of normal life that could have been salvaged, all in all, we do our bit.

And as we speak, some more people in the hospitals die, and some more buses are torched in protest, and some more people gravely shake their heads and call the whole thing 'unfortunate'. And tomorrow some more eggs will be thrown, more walkouts staged, while away from prying media and public eyes anarchy will continue in a small nondescript village in Bengal.

All in the name of industrialization, equality, progress, justice, compassion and basic human rights.All in the name of democracy. All in the name of the poor, the down-trodden, the deprived, the deceived.

Yes indeed they are the deceived. They, and thousand others like them who are yet to understand the curious working methods of the people who have made themselves responsible for their destiny. They are the cause and they are the victims. Not the other way round.

And while heated debates continue in plush air-conditioned offices about human rights and the merits of industrialization, a few brave young survivors are left by themselves to put out the fire they did not begin.

Something has gone horribly wrong somewhere, hasnt it?