A Rant Of An Onlooker

19th July, 2010. A fatal train accident between Uttarabanga Express and Vananchal Express. More than 60 people lose their lives. That's the official version. I don't even give a rat's piss for those numbers! The casualties would inevitably be higher. Maybe 100, or 200 or 500 - who knows!

In this modern age of technology, if two trains can still collide, it's high time we accept we don't need technology any more. Simply because this could have been achieved without technology too. They want us to sing "Sare Jahan se achha, Hindutaan hamara" (meaning India is the best in the world). Yes, why not? Has any other country has been able to come close to us? We can slaughter our own people with great aplomb. If you question the machinery of the State, you are shut off, diverted, shunted, wounded, or killed. They say a Free state has a lot of choices. Well, now that's truly called 'plenty of choices'!


Goons, hired or otherwise, start pelting stones at your home, as to make you a refugee in your own home - a suffocating, breathless, tormented jailbird. People keep succumbing to the hostilities, and animal rights' activists know our countrymen are not an endangered species. Well, not endangered, we're a progenerating species - accepted, no questions asked. But, atleast treat us like animals then ? Is it too much that we are asking for?

Man-made disasters compete with natural disasters - in terms of impact and leaving the scarry remnants for Time to heal. Our Railway minister does not resign, nor does she take moral responsibility for the man-induced catastrophe. She is busy making her own hay. There's this crap of an immediate investigation ordered. Public memory is short, our journalists's memories are shorter. In no time, given the chance, our journalists would hop over to scoop Mania Mirza's bra-size or Pipasha Basu's favourite colour of lingerie. And air it on Prime time news when you are having dinner with your family! Darn! And our people would care about cricket more than a train accident! You don't ever think a train accident can happen to you tomorrow, do you?

Now these investigations are a raw deal. The Board and its members run the show, interviewing people, grilling others, torturing some with questions, and making sure the culprits go scot-free. I believe justice in India should be made a paid-service, and as to make corruption legal, let's have early-bird offers. The first person to come and get the sackful of money to the Judge gets the judgment in his favour. Then there can be 'Tatkal Service' as well. This will bring some amount of stability to the politician-bureaucracy-judiciary nexus. Being responsible citizens belonging to a so-called Welfare state, you would then know why the judiciary failed - and Bhopal victims weren't the only victims of our judicial system.

At the accident site, am pretty sure, the Police would have already had a bout of face-saving exercises completed on time. They would have already locked up innocent people who knew nothing except the train coming. And after the accident, they would have had done yeoman's service, at nobody's behest, at the site of disaster and now only to be summoned to the police station to be asked if they had planted bombs. 'Suspects' is the watch-word! Obnoxious, deplorable!

Investigation would take 10 long years or more, but worry not - for the time-being, compensation would be given to the next kith and kin of the deceased. A lakh rupees or a few, but that's the price of a life we have decided. Who told there is inflation in our country? The price of a life never increases, let alone inflate! Petrol does. Somehow!

Anyways, life comes cheap. It's cheap not because our country has the world's second largest population, but because we are ready to die cheap. Out of the people who lost their lives that fateful day, how many would have realized before moving out of their homes that it's their final sojourn? How many would have thought they'd never be back home again? And how many would have thought there's the other world waiting for them in the train? People cannot see their future, so they wouldn't know.

But I might be wrong, since in our country you'd know you exist only by chance. Everyday.

If you have a chance, you might return back home safe and sound. People don't believe in Luck anymore, they believe in chance. Even at the loss of lives, our politicians hanker around for fodder in the form of those crispy notes, power, and pelf. Every party makes a courtesy visit to the spot of tragedy, trying to outdo each other. Shameless. Nobody understands what's going on, or the root cause, nor has anyone a bluepint for a permanent resolution to such dastardly acts of cowardice in the future.

Parties come and go, like hypocrites doing over-time, and paid for what they do, while people fend for themselves. They don't need you, they need your votes. That's how these scoundrels remain in power, hollowing up the society like termites eating up from within. A naked callousness. Nasty.

In the train, many would have been infants and children and womenfolk, and nobody would have survived the onslaught. Take a breath - there wasn't anybody from your family - not your wife, not your son or daughter. Thank God. Keep thanking Him, till one fine day you come to know your God forgot to respond. Just that one day!

When we can spend crores of rupees in getting equipments for the third-man umpire in cricket, Or holding lavish IPL parties all through the night, or channelling the tax-payers hard-earned money to innumerable youth conferences and exchange programmes, am not sure what stops us from buying equipments to keep such incidents at bay. Forever.

"India Shining" slogans can rend the air and cover newspaper prime-spaces. If we keep doing what we're doing now, it'll take another 1099 years for India to shine (you can note down today's date somewhere and pass it on to the next generation alongwith your Will - before or on the day you perish).

India cannot shine this way. Never.
People would leave their own country and never come back. Not that their love for their Motherland in any less, but because they don't want their sons and daughters to be slaughtered in front of their eyes. Just serving "reverse brain-drain" cocktails to the Fourth estate and media won't help either. A civilized world calls for accountability, acceptance, and then transformation as the tenets for any progress to be made. We would not want our future generations to grow up, see the seamless world outside, and sing on radio from somewhere abroad: "Hindustaan se achha, saara jahan hamara." (The entire world is better than India)

Earlier this week, I asked one of my Indian friends about his views on this tragedy -the train accident. He reacted thus: "Hey, such things happen, man! Hey, did you see the pictures of Dhoni (cricketer) getting married? What happened to his earlier affairs with Laxmi Rai and even Asin that he was having man? And now see he's getting married to somebody else!"

I was lost for words. My lips got numb. Kept mum.

The zeitgeist, till now, just seems to be an irrevocable continuum, short of any reprieve the way we are going today.
This ruthless butchering needs to end.

We need to start learning to live by choice, not by chance.
If we don't, nobody, but we are to blame.