30.9.08

Are we really sensitive, 'hypo' sensitive or simply 'hyper' sensitive?

I have been thinking about it for quite a few days now.

I know the blasts happen to be quite a clichéd topic for most of us. I mean they are happening so often that you would be forgiven for describing them as ubiquitous.

What made me actually start gathering my thoughts here is coming across two things today.

First of all, I had a packet of food with me this evening to give away to some needy person on the streets. As usual, whenever I have such a packet, I never meet anyone to hand it over to. So I gave it to my auto rickshaw driver and asked him to pass it on. Now the packet very obviously contained food, it smelt of food and was kind of squelchy soft. But given that he seemed so suspicious, I even asked him to check it. But the man wouldn’t just take it.

I mean this is exactly what the bastards planting those bombs want. They have succeeded.

But then at night I was reading Sunday’s paper (I sometimes do a Mrs Thurlow – the ox-like character from Bates’ short story The Ox if you happened to have read it – who in her leisure time read up old newspapers) where there was a guy’s account of the September 13 blast at Connaught Place. Of how he saw people coming out to help the injured. Of how he saw a sardarji with his brand new car giving a left to the blood-soaked injured. Someone apparently pointed out to him as to how his car was getting soiled to which the sardarji replied that he would rather give it up 50 times over than not do what he had decided to do.

In the meantime, I have had friends whose reactions have absolutely stunned me. One of them actually said this to me that the day the bombs went off in the GK market, she was 40 minutes away in the Priya market complex. The next day she was getting drunk and announcing to me on the phone, “AB, I am celebrating the fact that I am alive!”

There also remains the fact that while I was very shaken that Saturday about the blasts and getting very hyper about my conversation with the above-said friend and others like her, this Saturday I was calmly taking in the news of the fresh blast in Mehrauli. Is it a calm acceptance of things as they are or it it about losing sensitivity somewhere?

It's weird to look back at myself then and myself now.

I am rambling. The midnight-effect.

8 comments:

SMM said...

We'r extremely hyper sensitive is what I'd say.

A few days back I was in alift with a few other people. One of them was carrying a big black bafg and got a lot of funny looks from the rest of us. Finally he quietly set the bag on the floor and opened it up to reveal a big bunch of files and books.We'r extremely hyper sensitive is what I'd diagnose.

AB said...

smm: That was funny though!P-) Poor thing, how he must have been traumatised!

Punvati said...

Sensitive or not.. we're all just overdramatic is what I'd say.. Your friend u mentioned seems to be a case in point...

AB said...

divya: Imagine! I was so angry at something like this being trivialised, I cannot express.

Unknown said...

You are right about " they have achieved what they wanted to".... Everytime we step out of house, do we come back alive because of our better luck? had i been in delhi on that saturday evening, I would have either catching up with friends at CP or shotting at GK.. ironically, when I'm in delhi next, I'd still do it thinking' it wont happen today' but for how long?

Anonymous said...

Sitting here far away, I try to understand the gravity of the situation. When there was a blast in my hometown I called my parents to check everything was fine. Fine as it was(touch wood), it is hard to believe how we are being rocked in towns and cities that are not at all expected to. It is heartening to know the help that come in from the common people - "us". What is disheartening is how the Indian government is not able to make measures against these unfortunate events. Every other day we have bomb blasts and it just seem like a sensitive issue to the government!

Anonymous said...

I think "immune" would be the more apt word. We hear of such blasts are temporarily affected and in no time...switch channels, pages and get on with life.

Now its a different matter if such incidents hit much closer to our very own homes.

Punvati said...

You have been tagged :)