The events which took place yesterday jolted each and every one of us. But if you look deeper down through the dark tunnel (no, you don’t see light), what you see is a string passing through various events occurring in different parts of the world. Its manifestations are what’re different. I don’t know how many of you would subscribe to my views…
This morning I received a mail and as you all must be reading in the media… the reports of huge amounts being doled out to the AIGs and SACHs by the US Govt., bashing the same people who have channelized millions of dollars through the drain, providing them succor in form of hefty bonuses so that they can squander more and paralyze the already decaying economy. The president and his treasurer have been coddling the Wall Street elite, fretting that if they curtail executives’ pay and perks too much, if they make the negotiations with those who siphoned our 401(k)’s too tough, the spoiled Sherman McCoys will run away, the rescue plan will fail and the markets will wither. Vikram “Pandit the Bandit” at Citigroup, which received $50 billion in bailout money, is pulling a Thain, spending $10 million to renovate his Park Avenue offices, complete with a Sub-Zero refrigerator and “premium millwork” (whatever that is). All this when half of USA’s population is reeling under unemployment and desperation.
This is just one incident.
Let’s look at the second one:
We all raise a hue and cry when it comes to the growing fangs of terrorism... why? Because they traumatize people, make their life unlivable and leave them in a state where mercy also turns its back. Let’s mitigate it a little....terrorists violate our human rights. Deplorable, it is.
Now let’s the see the latest event which has shook us and made so many of us write these blogs.
What happened yesterday... the painful and irrevocable death of one of us. Any of us could have hurt ourselves playing football or basket ball or worse still a ceiling could have collapsed on us (just as it did in front of the Computational Fluid Dynamics lab of the Mechanical Engineering department, just behind VGSOM (though not on a person, thank God for small mercies)). On being asked who is responsible for our lives, the DD and DOSA turned the other way... we all saw that yesterday. We know the reasons behind the collapse of the system......it was not just the Director (I still can’t forget his diabolic grin)... in fact he became the scapegoat.
When we sit back and look at all these events ,what binds them all together is the fact they are all indicative of a decaying and crumbling system which is about to fall under its own weight. Whether its Obama, Osama or our very own "**** " ... (I’m sorry Obama and Osama)... they have all aligned themselves in a way which speaks of "change" and we have been seeing the kind of change that they have been bringing about. Pessimistic moi... but none of us are blind to see that the day isn’t far when most of us will align ourselves in a similar way. It may sound creepy but I have an innate feeling that we are all going to be overtaken by the paranormal and it will take another million years for a new human civilization to be born and start the vicious cycle again.
Where do we go from here? Rage, sabotage, candle marches... will all this resurrect the system? I doubt it. But at least we will have a new hospital... because we are going to need it to admit students who are going to be crushed when the old hostels fail to withstand the weight of an additional storey... coz we are going to need it to admit the family of some faculty because of the walls of his quarter has collapsed... coz we are going to need it to admit the scholars when a ceiling crashes down on them... coz we are going to need it to treat 20000 students who will fall ill because of overcrowded rooms and labs.
So it’s only a new hospital which we need. Isn’t it?
