Smile

Smile, they say, and the world smiles with you. The naive li'l babe-in-the-woods that I am, I believed in this adage. I may not have been much of a 'smiler', but I always tried to return a smile. That is, until a certain ex-DGP Rathore was seen smiling on national television.

This was one smile that changed all perceptions about smiles. This particular smile/snigger/smirk didn't make any of us smile. Rather, we felt perhaps as outraged as the modesty of young Ruchika. We felt outraged at our own helplessness, at the impotence of our Judicial system.

Actually it was, as Sango God would say, a juncture of mixed emotions. We felt outrage, fear, shame, anger, amazement, and topped it all with good old fashioned spiritual resignation. What can we do, except take out candle marches. Talking of candle marches, certain hostels have been forcing new comers into candle marches of a different kind, all as outrageous as the acts of Mr Rathore, the crackdown on ragging and all notwithstanding.

Are we really that helpless? A society that ostracises families when their young ones choose a partner of their choice can do nothing to show this pervert that he is not wanted? A society that massacred thousands of innocent people in response to the death of one lady can do nothing to protest against the merciless torture of a whole family? A society that burns up trains to prevent entry of 'unwanted' people into their territory can't do nothing to confine this corruptor to a solitary cell somewhere?

Of course it can be all done. But the problem here is the lack of a tangible target. It is not just one child molester that is to blame. This is just a manifestation of the systematic subversion of the entire 'system'. A system to beat the system, maybe? A conversation about the Ruchika case can never be limited to the two principal players, the overt victim and offender. The incident is just a footnote to the chapter which talks of thousands of terror victims with not a single conviction.

But the bigger problem is that this incident has just shown us our own true nature. All of us have, at one time or the other, felt ourselves above the law. We never hesitated in trying to bend the rules to our own convenience. It's something like the 'chori ke aam' that are always sweeter than the ones bought from the thele wala. But the chori ke aam have lost their innocence along the way and become a assertion of our true selves - lawless hooligans. When we see Ruchika's pics in the media, we don't see a pretty young girl, but the ugly man in the mirror. And it is not a pretty sight.

P.S. If, hypothetically, this piece were to form the commentary in a Burkha Dutt documentary,would it be followed by a commercial break for some anti aging cream?