I was just coming back from one of those usual family trips to the arenas of Rajpur Road on another Sunday after a delicious dinner at a vegetarian restaurant when I witnessed a heart rending scene at one of the traffic signals on the way. A man halted his scooter near the policeman’s standing point and walked a little distance to pick his mobile phone up which had fallen on the road and as he advanced towards his vehicle, he aggressively slapped and hit his little daughter because of whom his phone had fallen on the road. I could hear the girl’s cries even though my car advanced briskly towards the road that leads to my way home. My family members soon forgot the whole incident and we headed home with all of them briefly forgetting the thing and joking about it but it remained
intermittently remained in my mind and I couldn’t sleep for a long time that night because I was ruminating on a bitter reality that we all face today. Today materialistic pursuits have become so important that all our relationships and values have received a major setback. The mobile phone was so essential for the man that he did not hesitate to beat up his little daughter who might have dropped his phone by mistake, after all, she was a small child, and she might have made a mistake. And in any case, are mobile phones more important than one’s own children?? Nevertheless, that twitchy little device was vital enough to compel that man to beat up his daughter in public without a second thought. How unabashed!!
Today we all carry this attitude with us wherever we go and whatever we do. We have people killing each other for a piece of land, a sum of money, and worse, the victory or defeat at a cricket match! We have dismal conflicts at every house that lead to bigger and grimmer situations that arise out of little insignificant things that should not be valued but are still being treasured and entertained! Imagine a man killing his own brother for a little area of land. Is land more important than your own brethren?
It is simply incredible and blatant at the same time to see how reckless and ruthless we’ve become just because we covet those materialistic things that are nothing but trifle in front of the persistent and valuable relationships we share with people. Have we become so relentlessly dim-witted that we no longer understand the abstract and spiritual elements of our lives?
For any other youngster today, his mobile phone, his bike, his career, his house, his affluence matters more than maybe helping an ailing man on the road, or helping out people with a dedicated vision, or talking to his parents more frequently so that they are at ease.
Needless to say, a civil servant exploits a middle class person till exhaustion and exasperation not sparing a thought or being dutifully sensitive just in order to earn the extra buck.
A modern woman sleeps with a man only to find him deserting her with ignominy and misfortune just because his own motive of deriving pleasure is fulfilled and the woman today is nothing but a useless object to him.
Perhaps we’ve been disabled to differentiate between human beings and worldly possessions. That’s why we’ve started using human beings just as we use other appliances at home. Needless to say, we’ve become so avaricious. Before the creation of mankind, Adam ate the apple out of greed and defied God’s law, today greed is eating all of us up, and we still don’t prefer to defy this conditioning and this mentality of use and throw. Before we turn into gadgets and zombies and destroy the traces of goodness and humanity present on this planet, let’s wake up and make efforts to erase this malevolence before waiting to see another deluge of evil and rapacity overwhelming the human race.
Seeing this sorry state of affairs I find it appropriate to quote a line from this song I learnt in school some years back,
‘Riches only help to choke our hungry hearts, they blind us to humanity’
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