A thoughtful introspection by Mr.Soumyajyoti Bhattacharya, on the problems that plague modern people, and how it’s important to step back and realize that sometimes, somewhere, things are so much worse.
For a member of a general urban family based out of a metropolitan city in a
well-developed country, the problems are many. The general nuclear families of
today are frustrated with balancing work and family, maintaining a healthy
credit score while ensuring enough involvement within matters of society and
self. Then there are the necessities of food, water, sex, personal hobbies,
watching the sports team you support, visiting the colleague’s son’s Bar
Mitzvah. Life cannot be any worse than being an adult with a family
amongst the bourgeois of an economically stable nation. Except it can. And you
and I turn a blind eye towards it. Knowingly.
Imagine your healthy life. Frustrating and with ample problems which should
never be compared with the problems of others, Yes, as the problems are
problems enough for you. Now imagine your fine life disrupted tomorrow by a
routine protest. Against your government and their malfeasance. You roll your
eyes as set off to work. You have been about too long to know these protests
don’t last. People tire out. Except a month later, people are still vociferous in
their opinions and The Government, growing gradually uneasy, reacts by
dowsing young men and women in ricin gas. You frantically return to the
confines of your home and call everyone you know to ensure they are safe.
They are. That should clear the knot in your stomach, after all you’ve been in
here for far too long to believe this will result in something. Except it doesn’t.
The knot stays. And you don’t like what your instincts are telling you, the
instincts you have always trusted ; with you wishing your instincts weren’t so
right all the time. You sense the incoming doom and want to leave before
everyone else does. With your qualifications and job experience, you think you
will make a living anywhere. Except your country will not let you leave. And
other countries are getting involved on your soil. Selfish idiots, they have no
business here, you think. They do not care about you. They never do. In the
grand play of things, you are inconsequential. You do not realise this however.
Poor human soul, you want to live. To fly. To see your daughters become
wonderful young women. To kiss your wife and make love to her under the
moonlight. Again. You do something your ethics would have never permitted
you to do on a normal day. You make a shady deal. “Things I do for love”, you
against your better wisdom, you get on a boat to land in a country as a illegal
migrant. You remember your qualifications. You remember your ancestors
worked hard to make life easier for you. You know you are young enough. You
know you can do it too.Till the boat capsizes. And drowns all of your family, but
you. Yet it seems like it wasn’t the boat which capsized due to overcrowding. It
was your world. Your life. Yet you feel no pain, no grief, no adrenaline
fueled joy on surviving. You feel…well you feel nothing. And then they tell
you to run to the next nation. They say they have a lot of people already. They
say they cannot afford to feed ‘freeloaders’. They dub you terrorists because of
your religion. Months pass, years pass. The good life is a distant memory, your
wife and daughters a constant thorn by the side of your otherwise miserable
existence. Home is nowhere, life is nothing. At night you sometimes still look
up and wish that the moon wasn’t so bright. It reminded you of the smile your
wife gave you the night she conceived your firstborn child. That is the only time
you feel anything anyways, and somewhere deep down you know that you
wouldn’t give it up for all the luxuries you can get.
Now look around you and realise this is not true. Whether you are a man, a
woman, a child or an elderly ; if you are reading this, chances are you are not
the person I just described in the passage. Yet it can be. And while in an ideal
world we all would work towards improving international geopolitics, we
cannot. Can we not be more human ? If this was us, wouldn’t we want others to
be more human towards us ? Are you not the same species as “those refugees” ?
Yes. You are and you can. I know I am doing my part. I suggest you do
too.Else you never know when Fate does a little laugh and Karma turns her
back on you too.