Am I Worrying Unnecessarily?

 

Am I worrying unnecessarily?

Today I had a dozen articles that I had drafted out of which I had planned to complete and post one. But then I read an article by my friend Aamil Syed and it brought to mind things that had been worrying me for some time now.

More than the post by Aamil was the discussion on Facebook that his post generated where one girl vehemently insisted that the situation was only criminal and not communal. It made me wonder how much longer we are going to down play the things that we know are happening around us and so though I am scared about writing this article, I decided to do it anyway and post it instead of the one I had planned.

I generally tend to take life as it comes. I don’t worry too much because life doesn’t really change very much. Governments come and governments go. Taxes increase, prices increase and salaries also increase. People grumble but they manage to still make ends meet.

In fact in today’s world if you are a young urban educated person, you can definitely look forward to a good life. I can see the youngsters getting good jobs, earning well, living good lives. Then what is it that is making me feel so uneasy? What is it that makes me feel that there is something terrible looming in the horizon?

When I sit back to think, it is nothing big. Just small incidents, that over a period of time, add up to something more sinister. When a government of a secular country starts acting in a way that is not secular it is alarming. There is increasing evidence of this daily. And this doesn’t stop there. More and more on social media, on the net, people are openly and proudly claiming that India is a Hindu nation.

This by itself is not bad, but unfortunately this is being propagated by people who are intolerant and dogmatic. What does that then spell for our country?

Yes it makes me scared. I am scared even as I type this. Should I even be typing this at all? But if I don’t I will be giving into my fear and that is worse.

The banning of beef was just the start. If a lot of people of a particular community lost their livelihood due to this and related industries like the leather industry well, that’s just collateral damage right?  Who cares?  It just serves the purpose.

And if it gives people an excuse to kill someone who they suspect of eating beef, well, what can be done?

Atrocities against the Christians, atrocities against the Muslims.  Subtle and not so subtle. Who else will be targeted next? And why?

The senselessness of it all baffles me. What do they hope to achieve? How can a country that lives in fear prosper? And what are the rest of us Indians doing? Why are we just allowing it to happen?

The truth is I don’t know what to do. I know what is happening is wrong. But I am too scared to do anything about it.  In fact when the younger generation talk of not having kids, I feel relieved that there will be less people born into this nightmare that we are becoming.

The story of the mousetrap

Yet as I lack the courage to do anything I think of the story of the mousetrap.

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. “What food might this contain?” the mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap. Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning: “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!”

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.”

The pig sympathized, but said, “I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers.”

The cow said, “Wow, Mr. Mouse. I’m sorry for you, but it’s no skin off my nose.”

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house – like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer killed the chicken. But his wife’s sickness continued, so friends and neighbours came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer’s wife did not get well; she died. So many people came for her funeral; the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness. So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn’t concern you, remember, when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk.

Author Unknown

What made me write this today

As I have mentioned earlier in the article, these thoughts have been going through my head for some time now, but this is the blog post that made me put my thoughts into words. Here is where you will find Aamil’s post:  https://aamilsyed.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/the-meat-of-a-cow-and-the-blood-of-innocents/

You will find a lot of other interesting reads on his blog.