A friend of mine expired yesterday.
We used to go to school together. Didn't meet too often afterwards, given I have all the social skills of a baked potato, but one of us (generally her) regularly made the effort of calling up and staying in touch, talking about the good old days and making fun of hapless idiots from Ahlcon (generally me). You know? Reminiscing. And she never forgot birthdays. And she had a killer smile.
I keep having to go back and change clauses as I write this. I still haven't gotten used to referring to her in the past sense.
Maybe I shouldn't be referring to her at all.
I mean, grief is a relatively private emotion, right?
A few of us went down to her place today. A lot of tears were shed. No direct interaction was required with her parents, and to be honest I am massively grateful for that. What do you say to somebody whose child sat in the same classroom as you for over a decade? How do you even justify your continued existence, given that the center of their universe was younger than you and is now gone?
I shouldn't be here writing this. Why am I writing this?
Because she died in a lonely place.
I don't think her absence has sunk in yet. I don't think any of us has completely registered the fact that a chunk of our formative years no longer exists except in photographs. But the prevailing undercurrent should be one of sorrow, right?
I don't feel anything but anger. More than just that. I am livid. Furious. I could rip your throat out.
That's right, your throat. This is all your fault.
It was a road accident, as a tiny sidebar in a Hindi daily read today. Girl hit by private bus near Pandav Nagar, dies on the spot. They got her name wrong.
What they completely forgot to mention was that all this occured near one of the busiest intersections in the trans-Yamuna region, during the peak morning hour, when roughly 20% of the daily traffic volume both to and from the Noida Expressway travels next to that spot.
And she didn't die on the spot. She succumbed to her injuries en route to the hospital. With her father. Who came all the way from Connaught Place to get her.
Does this make any more sense to you now?
A young girl lies bleeding on the roadside. You speed past on your bike or in your car, you say nothing as the person who is driving pretends not to notice, you tell your driver to gun the pedal in case (heaven forbid) you miss the next redlight.
You, you, you.
You worthless indolent fucks.
She was still conscious afterwards, see. Some girls who happened to be passing by stopped to help her, to call her family, but for almost twenty minutes the commuters around her were kind enough not to disturb her.
Imagine that if you can. Surrounded by rush hour traffic and yet completely on her own. The rest of Delhi could stop existing and it would not make an iota of difference to her. And this from a city which takes to the streets almost every other week in support of some cause. Because rubbernecking isn't as alarming as rape, right? Apathy is not as newsworthy as anarchy.
Give me a fucking break.You are as culpable as that bus driver was. Perhaps more, because you simply decided to look elsewhere. You voluntarily thought of something else. What were you thinking? Oh, that cannot be anyone I know?
And the worst part is, I am as culpable as you.
I couldn't have been there. I still don't know half the details - news travels slow when our media doesn't feel something is catchy enough to champion - but if this hadn't been somebody I already knew and cared about I probably would've skimmed that tiny byline the same as you did. I wouldn't be ranting and raving right now.
It's the same idea that is force-fed to us ever since we're kids, isn't it? We're told not to bother ourselves with the plight of strangers. It is best not to get involved. Or maybe it was someone else's problem.
Luckily for you, it still is. I bet you cannot imagine what her parents look like. I bet you are still reading this with a clear conscience, you burning pile of canine excrement.
When I started writing I was sure the punchline at the end was going to be a call for you to read about losing a loved one in some ill-researched local news item. But I don't think I can wish that on anyone. Anger will give way to helplessness, to acceptance, to forgetting... And an article calling for empathy (instead of the usual indignation) will be the textual equivalent of pissing into the ocean and hoping it turns yellow.
But tomorrow, if it happens to be you or I bleeding out on the roadside, I pray to God our final moments are tempered by chaos and the kindness of strangers rather than the peace and quiet that we both deserve.
We used to go to school together. Didn't meet too often afterwards, given I have all the social skills of a baked potato, but one of us (generally her) regularly made the effort of calling up and staying in touch, talking about the good old days and making fun of hapless idiots from Ahlcon (generally me). You know? Reminiscing. And she never forgot birthdays. And she had a killer smile.
I keep having to go back and change clauses as I write this. I still haven't gotten used to referring to her in the past sense.
Maybe I shouldn't be referring to her at all.
I mean, grief is a relatively private emotion, right?
A few of us went down to her place today. A lot of tears were shed. No direct interaction was required with her parents, and to be honest I am massively grateful for that. What do you say to somebody whose child sat in the same classroom as you for over a decade? How do you even justify your continued existence, given that the center of their universe was younger than you and is now gone?
I shouldn't be here writing this. Why am I writing this?
Because she died in a lonely place.
I don't think her absence has sunk in yet. I don't think any of us has completely registered the fact that a chunk of our formative years no longer exists except in photographs. But the prevailing undercurrent should be one of sorrow, right?
I don't feel anything but anger. More than just that. I am livid. Furious. I could rip your throat out.
That's right, your throat. This is all your fault.
It was a road accident, as a tiny sidebar in a Hindi daily read today. Girl hit by private bus near Pandav Nagar, dies on the spot. They got her name wrong.
What they completely forgot to mention was that all this occured near one of the busiest intersections in the trans-Yamuna region, during the peak morning hour, when roughly 20% of the daily traffic volume both to and from the Noida Expressway travels next to that spot.
And she didn't die on the spot. She succumbed to her injuries en route to the hospital. With her father. Who came all the way from Connaught Place to get her.
Does this make any more sense to you now?
A young girl lies bleeding on the roadside. You speed past on your bike or in your car, you say nothing as the person who is driving pretends not to notice, you tell your driver to gun the pedal in case (heaven forbid) you miss the next redlight.
You, you, you.
You worthless indolent fucks.
She was still conscious afterwards, see. Some girls who happened to be passing by stopped to help her, to call her family, but for almost twenty minutes the commuters around her were kind enough not to disturb her.
Imagine that if you can. Surrounded by rush hour traffic and yet completely on her own. The rest of Delhi could stop existing and it would not make an iota of difference to her. And this from a city which takes to the streets almost every other week in support of some cause. Because rubbernecking isn't as alarming as rape, right? Apathy is not as newsworthy as anarchy.
Give me a fucking break.You are as culpable as that bus driver was. Perhaps more, because you simply decided to look elsewhere. You voluntarily thought of something else. What were you thinking? Oh, that cannot be anyone I know?
And the worst part is, I am as culpable as you.
I couldn't have been there. I still don't know half the details - news travels slow when our media doesn't feel something is catchy enough to champion - but if this hadn't been somebody I already knew and cared about I probably would've skimmed that tiny byline the same as you did. I wouldn't be ranting and raving right now.
It's the same idea that is force-fed to us ever since we're kids, isn't it? We're told not to bother ourselves with the plight of strangers. It is best not to get involved. Or maybe it was someone else's problem.
Luckily for you, it still is. I bet you cannot imagine what her parents look like. I bet you are still reading this with a clear conscience, you burning pile of canine excrement.
When I started writing I was sure the punchline at the end was going to be a call for you to read about losing a loved one in some ill-researched local news item. But I don't think I can wish that on anyone. Anger will give way to helplessness, to acceptance, to forgetting... And an article calling for empathy (instead of the usual indignation) will be the textual equivalent of pissing into the ocean and hoping it turns yellow.
But tomorrow, if it happens to be you or I bleeding out on the roadside, I pray to God our final moments are tempered by chaos and the kindness of strangers rather than the peace and quiet that we both deserve.
