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Talking Shop: Freaking times

Too many topsy-and-turvy events are confronting us. In this second column of the year, let me enlighten you about what’s happening around us at this time

Talking Shop: Freaking times
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“Wealth and poverty; one

is the parent of luxury and

indolence, and the other of

meanness and viciousness,

both (surely) of discontent.”

― Plato

It is a freak show, as the saying coined by none less than Plato warned us eons back. Around our now sanguine lives, we are shrouded and mired in decadence. That really bothers me. Happy New Year, people are blessing me. How? Why? What? Wherefrom? Everything that was happy around me is disintegrating into itsy and bitsy pieces, but I am told that I should gloat since I am 6-feet-tall and standing still. My nation’s stature is diminishing on many fronts, but our wantonness for profound and untold justice in small, meek and disparaging ways engorges some very delicate body parts.

Today, we are deprecating and belittling ourselves, rather knowingly. Is it all about personal growth for certain dedicated individuals, I wonder? So here goes a new-type column, reminding you and I where we are headed, of variegated events that have happened to us over the past few days in this New Year 2023. I am worried, since topsy-turvy events are confronting us. Over the next few paragraphs, let me discomfort you with what’s happening around us, all the time.

Lady under a car

This one is barbarism at its most lethal. Two girls leave a Delhi hotel after celebrating a get-together and head home on their Scooty. Suddenly, a car with five men inside rams them, scoffs loud and lewd, and flees. There is a twist in this tiger’s tail, though. One of the girls gets stuck under the car. She is dragged for 12-14 kilometers till she is clothes-less and skinless. What of her friend, the other girl, you wonder? Well, she (p)luckily falls on the other side of the ill-fated Scooty, runs home and keeps quiet about the incident. Confronted two days later, she claims her now departed from the world friend was hopelessly drunk.

The post-mortem report a day after this submission by the ‘friend’ thrashes this claim as there was no consumption of alcohol. Why did the friend lie? Perhaps because in the car that dragged the poor dear was a mid-level leader from the ruling party. As we know, fear and angst co-exist today—thus, the friend quietly went home and hid, forgetting that her near-sibling went for an unrequited ride for mile upon and mile, stuck under a car. What happened next? The survivor girlfriend is now learnt to be calling up neighbours and threatening them with dire consequences, but she has been caught on CCTV cameras and is now the talk of the town. What is the real sequence of events, you ask? We shall perhaps know some day.

Climate change

Congratulations. Our nation’s capital New Delhi is currently colder than Dharamshala, Dehradun, Nainital and other nearby hill stations. Nonetheless, Dilliwallahs should count their stars, given the situation in the rest of the world, with Europe all but freezing in the December winter because of an energy crisis stemming from the Ukraine ‘crusade’. But hang on, for they are now stuck in a heat wave. In the first few days of 2023, weather stations in Europe recorded the highest temperatures in January, ever. In the same few days, nearly a dozen weather records were obliterated in Germany.

Move on to the United States and Canada, where nearly 1.5 million people were without power across several states as a powerful Arctic winter storm swept the region. Large parts of both countries are still under weather alerts that stretch from coast-to-coast and as far south as the US-Mexico border. The storm has brought freezing winds and temperatures that are leading to frostbite. Over 1,400,000 people from Texas to Maine had no electricity. Canada is also facing power outages that have affected over 300,000 people in Quebec and Ontario.

Things have gotten so bad on the Climate Change front worldwide that we are, in cascades, witnessing extreme cold, devastating floods and blistering heat and drought, affecting millions of people and costing billions of dollars worldwide, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently said, describing the “tell-tale signs and impact” of intensified Climate Change. Just last week, I wrote about the booming global population and its impact on natural resources and the weather itself. Sadly, I am being proven true in quick-time.

Haldwani imbroglio

It has again taken the intervention of the Supreme Court to provide relief and succour to the average Indian Joe and Jane. A social storm recently broke out in Haldwani in the foothills of Nainital, when nearly 50,000 people faced the prospect of becoming homeless in the middle of winter after the Uttarakhand High Court ordered their eviction within seven days. Last week, the SC paused the eviction drive on land the Indian Railways claims belongs to it. “There cannot be uprooting of 50,000 people overnight. It’s a human issue, some workable solution needs to be found,” the apex court said as it stayed the eviction of people who live in nearly 5,000 homes.

The matter didn’t end there as the High Court had also suggested the use of force to evict the people in the area. That got sections of our ‘Prime Time’ media springing into action, calling people living in the area and belonging to a minority community ‘zameen jihadis’ (land-grabbers). Things got so deplorable that many of these elite bunch of ‘news reporters’ even had the crassness of directly questioning the affected people, repeatedly calling them ‘zameen jihadis’. The affected people, though, had the last laugh after the SC’s order. When the same reporters visited the area again, they were asked by the people: “Jihadi ke saath chai nahin piyenge? Ghabraaiye mat, kebab bhi khilaayenge...” (Won’t you have a cup of tea with ‘jihadis’? And don’t you worry, we shall serve you kebabs as well).

Other short takes

Let’s talk about the heights of intolerance and brazenness. Some right-wing group protesters last week themselves tweeted videos of their ‘protest’ against the upcoming Shah Rukh Khan-Deepika Padukone movie ‘Pathaan’, where they were seen destroying posters of the movie at an Ahmedabad mall. Their bone of contention—that Deepika Padukone is wearing a dress of a particularly sensitive colour in a song in the movie. Even as mall security officials pleaded with the perpetrators to stop the near-rioting, the protestors warned them that if the movie was still released in the cinema hall, that act would invoke their wrath.

Now we move on to alarming developments in Joshimath, Uttarakhand, which appears to be just crumbling away. Over the years, there have been increasing incidents of land sliding, subsidence, land sinking, land burst and cracks in the area. Over the last few months, the problem has intensified. Over 500 houses have developed cracks, roads have opened up or caved in and people are leaving in their thousands. Environmentalists and activists claim that as far as 20 years back, they had written to the authorities, warning them that incessant development, building of hydroelectric projects and tunnelling would weaken the sub-structure and threaten the town. And now, they are being proven right.

Finally, let’s talk about the man in a white T-shirt who has been walking across the nation, drawing unprecedented crowds in a never-before show of public solidarity. But rather than talk about this or the 3,000 kilometers he has already covered on foot, the only topic for research for his opposition parties is the white T-shirt. Apparently, research has been conducted by a ‘team of experts’ on whether he doesn’t feel cold, or if he is just trying to claim sympathy by being jacket-less, or whether he is surreptitiously wearing a concealed set of thermals underneath the white T-shirt. Photographs have been taken from a hundred angles and carefully investigated. Talk about decadence.

Let’s sum things up with a quote from Bertolt Brecht: “When crimes (and insensitivity) begin to pile up, they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.” Sadly, we seem to be treading into this dangerous territory.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal

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