KIN

Pune, 29th July 2010.

It was a horrific site on Senapati Bapat Road as I came back from my project place today – an entire seven storeyed building on fire, just like in the movies. The whole business complex had become a furnace – fire lashing out from all different openings that the building had. The terrace and the last floor of the building were completely wrapped up in a thick black blanket of smoke.

Me and my friend had already seen the smoke from about two kilometres away, and we had tried to find out what it could have been. I dropped my friend off at the bus stop.

‘Tell me what it is if you find out,’ she said, before I drove away. And within a couple of minutes I was staring at the business complex inferno.

All sense was lost to me for a moment. I could hear no sound, see no traffic, and sense nothing as I stared at the flames coming out of the building, threatening to wrap around everything that came in contact with them. I just kept staring at the site, totally numb and speechless. It was only when my hand went to my face to wipe out what I thought were rain drops did I realise I was crying.

I tried to make myself stop. But the tears just kept coming. I drove along the footpath at almost nil speed, staring at the fire. I just couldn’t take my eyes off it. When I reached opposite the building, a whistle blew right in my ears, and my sense returned. There was a huge crowd that had gathered on the streets and was staring at the building. A few traffic policemen were trying to control the traffic and divert it onto appropriate roads, blowing on their whistles time and again. I stopped to the side of the road and parked my bike. My eyes were as if glued to the scene of peril.

‘Tumcha kuni ahe ka aat?’ (Is anyone you know inside that building?) a boy standing next to me asked me. I nodded ‘no’, still looking at the building and the fire brigades parked nearby.

‘Mag ka radtaye tumhi?’ (Then why are you crying?) the girl with the boy asked. That remark somehow made me tear my eyes away from the building and look at the couple.

‘Mhanje?’ (What do you mean?) I asked. And the boy just shrugged. The girl looked at him, and then they both looked at me. I turned my eyes back at the building. They took a couple of pictures and then drove off.

I looked at the building and everything happening around for a few more moments. Something gave my feet momentum and I walked back to my bike. The policemen brandished their lathis at people, trying to get them to move away from the scene. I sat on my bike and drove away from there.

I was still quite in a dazed state as I drove on towards my home. The site of the building on fire, of people standing around and looking, of smoke coming out of the building, the fire brigades parked nearby kept coming back in my head again and again. My ears had somehow gone mute again. All I could see were scenes, like in a silent movie. And then suddenly I heard the girl’s voice ringing in my head –

‘Mag ka radtaye tumhi?’

And then like a record that gets stuck in a gramophone, those words were the only ones ringing in my mind for a while, until they were like a battle cry.

And they made me angry. And frustrated.

‘Mag ka radtaye tumhi?’

I honestly do not know why I started crying when I looked at the building. No one I know, none of my friends or relatives was working in that building. I didn’t even know the different offices that the building housed. And yet the site of that building on fire, on a street I travel by everyday alarmed me, scared me, and made me cry.

Is it so that we must cry only when someone we know is hurt or faces a mishap?

Why have we become so immune to each other’s pain?

I honestly, genuinely felt worried sick for the people in that building. I thought of their families, their relatives, waiting for them to return home from their work. Maybe some had dinner plans; maybe it was someone’s birthday; first day of work for someone; a day of promotion even. Maybe someone had fought with her boyfriend before coming to office that day – would the boyfriend be able to forgive himself for having fought with her? Maybe someone had decided to not go out for lunch with friends because there was extra work that day – would they all be able to see their friend again?

The real cause of the fire is not known yet, it will probably come in the papers tomorrow. But I am guessing that with the rains and all, it must have been a short circuit that must have caused the fire. But short circuits can happen anywhere, right? What if there was one to happen in my college tomorrow? Or one at Dad’s office? Or maybe even in our own home?

And in a worse come scenario – what if I had people like the couple I spoke to around me when my family was in trouble?

The thought sincerely scared me.

Why is it that we have become so immune to the feelings of people around us? What has made us so stone hearted as to not feel anything when we see a whole building on fire, just because no one we know is burning inside? It is a shame if our material things and all the progress we are making is also making us so insusceptible at the same time. I don’t mean to say that we should cry at the slightest of bad news and should go and pay our respect to every family to ever have faced death. But if people have come to a state where they look at a scene like the one I saw today and feel nothing, it is something to worry about indeed.

This brings up a lot of issues to the forefront. On reaching home I learned that all people from the building were rescued and were safe, with no major injuries – it was running on one of the news channels. And still that unsettling feeling had not dissipated from within me. How is it then that terrorists are able to plan the killing of thousands and lakhs of people? We come close to driving over a small kitten or puppy on the road and we screech to a hault. That is our first instinct – to not harm the kitten or puppy. It gets our heartbeats racing and our pulse shooting. Then how is it that people are able to kill someone? What might be the reason to make them the way they are?

I understand that we cannot really put the aam janta and killers, murderers and terrorists in the same balance pan, but looking at all of them as human beings, don’t you agree that as a race, humans are becoming more and more self-absorbed? As long as I am happy, my people are ok, and no one I know is in trouble, I couldn’t care less if a train blew up in Mumbai, or if a Tsunami left scores of people homeless, or if a building in my city caught fire. How did we get to this point?

This is not an issue that you play the “blame-game” with. This is more something to think and reflect on. We see an accident, and all we do is look upon the people with our arms crossed across our chests. We look at the mother trying to calm her child and find her keys and other belongings while the minor who dashed into her speeds away. We neither offer the poor girl water or first-aid, nor do we note down the number of the vehicle the minor kid was driving. We are no help, just a bunch of on-lookers. Imagine a case of reverse – how much would we curse the spectators just standing around doing nothing? I know people who have become paralysed for the rest of their lives, lost an arm or leg, or even their eye-sight or speech because of not getting help in time. Why do we run away from an accident when it has been our fault? Why are we so scared of the police? Why aren’t we responsible enough to take blame of some wrong we have done, and at least try and make amends?

It is all about me, and my pain, and my suffering, and my family, and my friends, and my happiness, and my comfort, and my benefit – me, my I. I want this. I want that. I was cheated. I was hurt. I am disappointed. People have failed me. When will we come out of the ‘I’ and look at the ‘we’? Ask yourself this – when was the last time you helped someone out, genuinely and only because you wanted to help him/her out? When was the last time you did something for someone without thinking ‘Now I can ask him/her for a favour sometime’?

I do not know what it is that is taking our attention so perfectly away from each other and the people around us, so much so that no one matters to us much anymore. I do not know what is making the human race the way it is. But if we all do our part of thinking, I am sure we can come up with ways to change this – for this is a change definitely required.

Everyone, each and every single person on this planet, is capable of doing good karma – from convicts to the innocent. And it doesn’t matter whether you believe in luck, fate, destiny and stuff like that or you don’t; good always begets good, what goes around comes around, and good things do happen to good people.