Monday, February 20, 2012

Pillars and Stones

An excerpt from an old and incomplete article of mine.

She was about 70 years old.There was that serene look on her face, which came with old age.She was crossing the street when that over speeding bike hit her.As she lay on the road breathing heavily, with grave injuries, people flocked together.They murmured to each other.Vehicles stopped and families prayed for her from the cozy insides of their car. And, she still lay on the road.It finally took a bunch of people, the 'good Samaritans', to 'act' and dump her body inside the nearest car. The driver was, of course, totally unwilling to take her but had to, amidst all the shouting.Some time later, she died, even though the nearest hospital was barely minutes away.

As scores of steeled skyscrapers encroach into the once pristine land, we are losing something else besides the greenery. Our humanity. Welcome to a terrifying world, where people do not give a damn, about what happens to others or if they do, they did rather wish them luck from a distance.

Human beings are naturally programmed to react to an external stimulus in two different ways.Fight or Flight.As our society evolves with time,the response has become skewed towards the latter.We run away and we run fast.We run away from giving help and from reacting against what we consider wrong because we fear a backlash.The vast majority of us stand by.We would prefer to be a concerned onlooker, the quintessential walking-talking stone.