Silence breaks into tears

One more New Year’s Eve! Yet another lame reason to welcome the New Year semi-consciously. Party hard to glory, get sloshed and end up waking with a splitting headache, regretting every sip after getting that one kick which hints you to stop.  I feel none of it. 

My mind wanders so many places today. I resolute every night that I would welcome the day with positive thoughts and today as I woke up, I got glued like everyday to my cellular to check for twitter updates. She passed away in pain, suffering and a haunting memory. My thoughts came to a halt and for few seconds I remained passive. She died a brutal death! 

Some so called sages propagate Hinduism with emotional mechanisms and inflict paranoia by stating “Believe in Karma”. This 23 year old woman raped by 6 sadomasochists who pulled her intestine out of her body and beat her with an iron rod looked straight in the media camera with their masked faces. I wonder which karma of hers led her to this gruesome death. I was brought back to consciousness by my tears and I let my finger tips feel them once. This time, tears came out for someone I did not know, for someone I have not even seen or met. This time, I endured pain for someone whose name I do not know. 

The phone beeps and a friend enquires my New Year’s plan. I pretentiously tell him of how unplanned I am this time. I am amidst the confusion of whether to or not then I sit back and think the reason I feel this pain in my heart. She deserved to celebrate this new year’s eve too! The movie she was returning from, “Life of PI”, must have taught her to never give up in life, which is why she fought to live for 13 days. 

Politicians with their long pause speeches indicate the grief they feel for her loss. Politicians with their fake expressions tell us viewers that she was a brave girl and may her parents find the strength to deal with this loss. 

Dear Politicians, we do not need your prayers or sentiments. We do not get deceived by those long pauses in your speech which you use to indicate that you feel saddened by this. We do not need your official statements well drafted by your PRO’s. We are at a point where we absolutely expect nothing from you. We are tired of the drama of politics. All we know is we do not feel secure when we walk on the roads. All we know is at the end of every financial year, we pay crazy amount of tax to the government for getting ourselves entertained every weekend after tiring weekdays. And yet as we desire to distress ourselves by going to restaurants or watching movies, we live in the fear of getting raped after coming out of the movie hall. Capital punishment is not a solution, you say. We do not know the best solution then. We chose you to decide for us. 

In few days or months from now, the court would take its decision and in few months from then, we all would be coerced to live our routine, once again living with the fear that we could be next.  We humans train ourselves to tolerate pain and act numb. Once in a while, we lose our mind and outburst our inner emotions by breaking the long relationship with silence. Yet, we oblige ourselves by instilling positive thoughts and when our hearts break, we wear the mask of either numbness or ignorance. 

This life of ours would one day soon come to an end and perhaps amidst all this, we are only wishing to leave this world peacefully. 

Written by Vrushali Deshpande