As an Indian, the past few weeks have been filled with collective grief and unimaginable sorrow.
Firstly, Indians were killed point-blank while vacationing in Kashmir, all in the name of religion. We taught Pakistan a lesson but lost the plot on the internet. The Western Media like always was unkind and dismissive of our pain - we couldn’t do a damn thing. On top of it, it was shown to the world that we had to stop because of the truce brokered by the President of a Western Country. The racist trolls made fun in the time of our collective suffering - and some of our own still sing the song which plays on a Western Radio station.
Secondly, commuters got killed falling off the local trains in Bombay. Working class citizens started their day in the morning to earn two square meals, hoping to provide for their kids’ education or may be buy their wives/girlfriends a dress which she has been wanting for weeks - and fall off from the overcrowded train after a train coming from the opposite direction brushes the first one. The thing here is - no one wants to hang at the footboards, it is just that during the Monsoon - there isn’t enough air to breathe inside of the overcrowded trains.
Thirdly, AI171 met with a fatal accident in Ahmedabad. Killing 241 aboard in the flight and some 30-odd budding doctors on ground after it crashed into a Medical College Hostel. Too early to say, what caused this - yet when people become stats in a listicle related to flight crashes - it simply is too painful. An air hostess from Manipur, a doctor, a newly wed wife, a couple with three kids - all those dreams got consumed by jet-fuel fire.
Probably this grief is a lesson. In geopolitics and in grief, there are interests I guess - they don’t care about you or your pain or your state of mind. And that is something one should never forget. An incident in the West gets attention, an incident in my country becomes a piece in a listicle. It might be my naiveté but the only solution to this is to work hard, make things, build businesses, make one self-sufficient and make our country strong.