Hope amidst hubris

[I originally wrote this in late 2015, and except that this doesn’t have an updated list of catastrophes leading up to the present times, this feels as reflective of today as it did back then.]

I can’t even say that it haunts me. I mean, doesn’t something have to be dead, gone, forget-worthy to be qualified to haunt? This is something I see every day. Without fail. At the traffic intersection right outside my house, I inch gingerly forward as the light turns green. I know that the cross traffic is not going to stop just because the light is red on their side. They will power through, squeeze through, brazen through, without giving a damn for rules and such-like.

You’d think seeing this happen daily for eight years (except on weekends) would have inured me by now to this incredible arrogance on the part of these violators, in their assertion that they are a law unto themselves, that the laws don’t apply, at least, not to them.

But it still gets my goat daily (except on weekends).

Over there, at a swanky mall, at a London-born pizzeria in South Delhi, a gaggle of kids is lined up at a long table, digging into pizza, some gloriously chocolatey-gooey mess; some are digging into their noses simultaneously. On the other side of the restaurant, some mothers (no fathers in sight) that couldn’t help but physically accompany their kids all the way into the restaurant have successfully distanced themselves from the cacophony. Behind each kid, there stands an attentive attendant of some variety. An ayah here, a maid there, a bhaiyya there. A hapless professional photographer of dubious qualification clicks away, capturing the moving imagery not so much for posterity as for the ubiquity of the social media news-fed monster.

You’d think seeing this all over the power-and-pomposity driven circles of the capital all the time would have made me seasoned in turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the unabashed entitlement and disparity on display.

But it refuses to become a blind spot in my life.

A drive-by shooting between gangsters in the heart of the Millennium City of Gurgaon at rush hour results in the death of neither of the gangster parties, but instead, of an autorickshaw driver who, along with his autorickshaw was crushed beyond repair under the weight of the somersaulting SUV that turned turtle when the driver (one side of the shooting party) panicked and lost control. In Delhi, young migrant parents of a toddler who succumbed to dengue for want of timely treatment succumbed to the pressures of life without their toddler, and threw themselves to death from the top of a four-storey building. In Texas, extremists’ mission of driving fear and division into the minds of America and Americans saw success in the arrest of a 14-year-old Muslim teen for building a clock from scratch at home for a school project. In Madhya Pradesh and Mecca, more than a hundred people were killed at each place by malfunctioning manmade objects with apparently maleficent intent.

You’d think fifteen years into a millennium creating new watershed moments of mayhem, I’d no longer catch myself being surprised at this.

But I still haven’t developed a thick enough skin for the hair not to stand on end at such news.

Over in Turkey, images of a toddler washed ashore sear through humanity’s collective memory. Unperturbed, ISIS continues to traffic in sex slaves, behead scholars and kafirs, and infiltrate recruits beyond their borders. Africa’s ethnic / religious genocides show no signs of abating. A Minnesotan dentist bags Cecil the lion to reinforce how humans are the only bloodthirsty species that kills for sport, not just for food. And reinforcing the lopsidedness of the ecological balance is the fact that barely 29000 rhinos exist in the wild around the world. To put that in context, the human population is in excess of 7.3 billion.

You’d think having seen similar images from Vietnam, Tiananmen Square, and Iraq over the years would’ve prepared me to not wonder anymore at humanity’s inhumanity.

But I still wonder at how we ignore history and continue to repeat it.

Donald Trump mouths inanities and profanities, and incredibly, millions engage with him, believe him, believe in him. India, in the meanwhile, is building up a slow movement to rename itself as Ban-glut-desh. Intoxicated by the anonymity and power afforded by social media, a reverse activism of sorts has sprung up to spur intolerance towards opposing perspectives, and the mob’s lust for instant public shaming, to new levels. Bangkok feels the aftereffects of the invisible hand of terror. Malaysia still quails from the PTSD symptoms of multiple airline disasters in the year past. Chile scurries from nature’s fury to not repeat the fate suffered by Nepal in the aftermath of a massive quake. For the first time in many years, stories of corporate greed triggering tragedy are overshadowed by other stories of grief.

The litany of consequences humankind is being confronted with because of its own hubris is almost endless.

And the blindness to it is deafening.

Luck has always played the most significant hand all through time. But all of humankind’s interventions now seem to be aiding the odds not of serendipity but of self-destruction.

And yet, hope persists.

I like to believe that my incredulity at atrocity, my inability to inure myself against the shock of wanton destruction, my anger at insensible travesties are all proof of it. I believe, and I hope, that there are many millions feeling the same. And this ability to care, inspite of the overwhelming odds of the species continuing to careen down this path, is what gives me hope.

That, and when I hear seven-year-olds on reality shows belting out complex melodies with a voice and a confidence that shows that innocence is perhaps the best shield for humanity against itself.