An honest announcement of a friend of mine on a public forum regarding his disappointment in the New Year forced me to think a bit about change today.
Despite all hue and cry around it, the world had not changed the way it had promised. The euphoria created made us believe for a second that New Year will be significantly different from the one that is just going to end. In New Year, people will be kinder to each other. (As if Santa were to shower some sense and sensitivity in their minds!!) There will be some sanity in our celebrations and the considerations paid to the concern of overall well being will increase, at least marginally. So on and so forth we contemplate so many other changes that we need to implement for a better world.
The grand new day arrives, on which all these and many other hopes are pinned and what happens?
All this fall flat as a castle of cards. To sheer shock, we observe people acting even more brutally, with renewed force. Our celebrations almost anesthetize us from most of the realities. Engrossed in our life we tend to make our senses numb so that we don’t have to bother our minds with problems that others face. Corruption still flourishes. Thousands spend nights shivering while we cuddle in our warm quilts without even giving a single thought to their apathy, let alone doing anything to solve it. Foeticides continue, public money misappropriated, strikes for reservations go on…. Apart from these public pains, some private pains also keep aching millions around us.
But who cares? We are too busy to halt, think, act and make a difference to anyone else. Ask yourself, when did you last wipe of a tear from an eye??? I asked this to myself and struggled to find an answer.
It is very easy and tempting to consider the misfortunes of others as a result of their own bad deeds or mistakes or downfall. It is equally difficult to empathise and act towards making the world a little better place for others also, irrespective of the magnitude of that improvement. Somehow we have developed a habit of adopting easy routes. (Some CALL IT OPTIMIZATION!!)
Many may rub this comment off as a vent of frustration, anger or jealousy also. And accuse me of playing a spoilsport. But as they say, problems do not go away if you turn your eyes away from them.
One thing that commands some celebrations is that still we have many people who feel the disappointments for absence of some changes. So long as there is a desire for change, determination to work for it can be attained and acted upon. I firmly believe that all these (Choose your adjective: Positive/negative) forces, will confluence and lead to some of the changes we so badly need to execute.
Act while there are still some days in calendar none knows which one will be the last…. .
2 comments:
New Year is like the light from the lamps,for the poor man, who won Akbar's challenge, Dhruv. The New Year may not bring with itself much change, but if one has to start a day, why not start it on a positive note. And doesn't history bear testimony to the fact that change grows like a sleeping monster, only to wake up & take the world by storm? Just a thought..
quarter, u r right.
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