Blind Spark

“Beat him…, Beat him…., Beat him so much that he dies…”

By listening to this, I approached towards the crowd, from where this sound was coming…

Standing at the outer layer of the crowd, I tried to see what was happening in the center…

But, unfortunately, could not!

As I came a little closer to the center, I heard that a boy was crying and saying “Leave me this time, I will never do anything like this again…”.

“No, there is no excuse….!!” – one person told from the crowd…

“You have done the blunder…” –another person told from the crowd…

“You don’t have right to live in this society…”

“You are an evil spirit, vampire in front of God’s eye".

By that time, I had already reached the inner layer of the crowd and was able to see how heartbreaking the victim looked.

A boy was lying on the ground and the public was throwing stones, pebbles towards him…

Hair was grey and completely messed up, falling on his face, covering part of his face, which was hiding his tears to be viewed by the public. A thin line of blood was coming out from his head, moving towards his neck, touching his pale, concave contoured cheek. Dress was completely messed up and torn away, seems like it was not even dipped into water since months. Many wounds throughout his body. By getting hit so much, he was not even able to get up from his place. Rice was sprinkled everywhere around him and a small vessel was thrown near him….

I could not understand the reason of this scene.

Then one person from the crowd shouted loudly that, “This man does not have any right to live, as he has stolen rice…”

“So, rush up and give him a death…” diligently

Suddenly, the crowd rushed towards him by pushing me back…

All started hitting him with best of all their means of what they could…

I was seeing calmly that the boy was slowly approaching towards his death….fighting for his last breath…

All the so called men of our society finished their job, even though everyone in the crowd was well aware that the boy was mentally retarted, took a selfie with him and left to their respective houses...

That boy was still lying there full of blood and I was still looking at him like a silent evidence…

I didn’t have to say anything….

25th Feb 2018, India.

Two tragic deaths- one was Bollywood queen Sridevi and the other was Madhu, a very poor tribal from Palakkad, Kerala. Sridevi died from cardiac arrest, a natural death, but Madhu was beaten up to death.

Reason? He was suspected to have stolen rice. Did he deserve it because he was extremely poor and so had no right to live? He too was as precious to his mother, as I am to my mother.

His mother must have been eagerly waiting for him to return, but all what she could get back was his dead body. Sridevi and Madhu might be from different class and status, but both of them were made of flesh and blood, both of them had a family waiting. We might counterreact, by saying that these people deserve this kind of killing as they have no shame in stealing or blah, blah..

But what makes them steal??? Are they born crooks???

There was a huge inacceptance of the Indian public about the comment of Congress that UPA government had accoladed Padmashree to Sridevi during its tenure. But how many were there to raise their voice against the molestation that happened with Madhu?