Make Room! Make Room!

 

 

The movie mogul, his trophy wife, the nations future Prime Minister(s), the Family Pimp, their buck-toothed children, the sycophants and their entourage of minders - now if this isn’t the picture of a thriving India, I’m not sure what is.

 

The Indian Premier League has fired the imagination of every ardent cricket enthusiast on this planet. Never before has any sporting event lead to such ginormous hysteria. Absolutely nothing matches the passion and zeal of a 3-billion strong nation OD-ing on an extravagant display of a sport so glamorous; they give every other game a run for their fan-base!

 

And for a third world nation, we haven’t done too shoddily.

 

The run up to the main event was paved with supercilious goss about internal politics so malevolent; they’d have caused Mz. Collins serious antagonism. Movie moguls from the Indian film industry, not content with their multi-billion rupee pay checks jumped into the scrimmage in their indefatigable ardor for more lucre.

 

Consortiums of eight bidding franchises comprising of movie stars, liquor barons, industrialists, entrepreneurs and the nouveau-riche huddled in groups for months on end haggling over how much they could spend on their new toys. The formal auction of ballsy livestock created the kind of media-frenzy that the David Beckhams and the Tiger Woods of this world can only dream of.

 

And last weekend, the Knight Riders proved their exacerbating dominance by crushing their abysmal competitors, the Deccan Chargers in a match that just barely held one by the seat of the trousers as it were. The melodrama of the last few overs pushed every envelope of decency and decorum – what with the fanged-khoob-bhaalo-junta at Eden Garden baying for the sweet avowal of conquest.

 

The game well played, our nation rejoiced. The organizers recovered their investment. The endorsements made a killing. The vulgarly rich added to their already burgeoning coffers of affluence and profligacy. Spring settled in the air – as also in the step.

 

And this celebration by the bourgeoisie seemed ironic given that 41 children died the day before in the state of Gujarat in the sleepy town of Vadodara.

 

The children, aged 13-15, were traveling by a state transport bus, to nearby Bodeli village to appear for the last leg of their school examinations. What was meant to herald their time for well deserved R&R turned into a fateful blood-bath - the bus driver appeared to have lost control of the vehicle while trying to outrun a speeding truck. The vehicle smashed through a concrete barricade and plunged nearly 50 feet into the canal killing all but four children who miraculously survived.

 

And with this heart stopping occurrence came the bereavement of the 15-odd families these children belonged to.

 

41 dreams died that day.

41 futures perished forever.

41 desires will never be met.

41 destinies were killed eternally.

41 younglings were denied forever, a stab at life.

 

Authorities in India have a rather cavalier attitude towards safety norms especially while traveling and every rule that would otherwise ensure perpetuity is defiantly flouted. Speed limits exist only in theory; pot-holes the size of craters ensure lumbar related ailments even before one can attain puberty. The number of people allowed to commute by public transport defies every law of gravity and physics.

 

In their bid to save face, the state government offered a paltry compensation of a few thousands to each family to tide them over their irrevocable loss.

 

And while the enormity of this devastation was unfolding on camera, the nation and its cream of the crop rejoiced in their Polo tees and their Burberry caps with their Fendi shades and their Vuitton totes with gay abandon as their favourite league obliterated their gaming opponents.

 

Even the average social worker, socialite, social climber and other assorted social low-lives that usually hoard the headlines in their bid to outdo one another while masquerading as the voice of concern for the under-privileged, made no attempt to mark this occasion with the solemn-ness that was required of a people.

 

The Shabana Azmis, the Teesta Sitalvads, the Arundhati Roys and other keepers of our (moral) collective conscience seem to have lost their voice or perhaps think this not as lucrative a cause to lend their well honed prose and voices to. This Pharisee brigade of duplicitous charlatans and their class have proved yet again, as supposititious representatives of our people, that we are in fact a nation without a soul.

 

Our governance continues to otiosely go about their business like patronizing mountebank – without as much as a kind word or a semblance of grief for the immutable loss of those hapless families that have had to endure this misfortune.

 

Had this been in that first world country we so love to censure, the entire nation would’ve been in mourning. Every chat show host, every academy award function, every sporting event, every publication, every blog and portal and in fact, the entire polity would’ve gone into an over-drive to ensure the well-being of the bereaving families of these innocent victims.

 

I hang my head in shame and revulsion for those we consider beau ideals in this over-populated and insensate nation. These paragons of virtue and rank ought to be mortified by their crass acceptance of this regrettable incident as one of many that occurs in a nation where accidents are just another way of life.

 

Tonight I say a prayer, as I have since last week, for the ones who passed, and those that remain.

~ by alternativefrock on April 23, 2008.