I regret I am healthy (not screaming)
Had been going through another phase of life when you comprehend less though you introspect more and I didn’t post anything for almost two weeks. Had been pondering how to write next after a year of blogging and 125 surviving posts. My occasional foray into poetry was not poking me further; though being the index of my emotional life, this blog decided to remain silent these early weeks of May, when things were really emotionally heady.
But sometimes the lyrical dies, the novelistic fails and the quote of the day in my feedreader reminds Krishnamurti’s “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” I’m sorry I adjusted and did not scream. I regret I am, still, healthy.
I am not sharing three news items, I resist elaborating in details what has fouled my mood; they range from the trivial to the horrible, circumventing the symptomatic. I am sharing three reactions.
I.
Laurelin, one of those feminist bloggers whose writings I regularly browse, reacted against an onstage molestation by a buffoon named Johnny Vegas in the name of a comedy-show and then reacted against trolls. How I recall my similar experiences when this blog also tried to react against certain social evils! One of those symptoms of sickness: everyone has their reasons, everything has its reasons! I like the way she says: “You do not have a right to my space, no matter how smart/important/rational you may think you are”.
I was just checking out one of the blogs maintained by The Radical Ancient, a friend who is gradually arriving our WordPress, and then heard her reacting against one of the most hideous sickness performed by a woman: an ‘artist’ announcing her next installation showcasing her innumerable designed miscarriages. She says: “[Art major Aliza Shvarts'] real “crime”, if any, is that she is creating a life for the express purpose of destroying it. And THAT is the part I can neither rationalize nor condone. It’s not rational, it’s not natural, it does not serve towards anyone’s happiness. The most it will do is get her some attention, which she probably thinks will make her happy.”
Those two, in the name of performances and art. Sickening still: there are reasons against these reactions. The third is neither art nor buffoonery, it is a crime precipitated for a lifetime. I hate to summarize it. Another respected blogger also reacts: “Mr Fritzl is a man, not a monster. He’s just a man who took being father and husband to monstrous extremes. I know on one hand that doesn’t seem important or even counter intuitive, but I do think that if we reject Mr Fritzl’s humanity that we lose the chance to understand what drives some to this extreme. For good or for ill the forces that created this situation are echoed to some degree in each of us and in society at large. Or for a warped analogy, if one finds a cancerous tumour in one’s body, it’s neither helpful nor accurate to say “That evil tumour isn’t part of me.” While obviously the tumour must be excised, it can’t hurt to try and figure out what caused it in the first place.”
II.
Dear reader, did you travel the above links to enlighten yourself about the profound sickness of the world we are living in, where the president of US of A accuses my countrymen of triggering world-wide food shortages because we Indians are supposedly overfed? What do we deem more shocking, Mr Bush’s conclusions or the above three abominations? Probably neither, they are mere fodders for news. Johny Vegas will molest women live in the name of self-deprecating comedy after a volunteer says she liked it. Arts majors like Aliza Shvarts will maintain that she has all the rights to use her body as statements as long as it is her body. And daughters of the likes of Mr Fritzl will simply wither away to disappearance. Women will remain fodders to men’s news. Read more…
