Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Aren't we better off?
Sometimes it seems that life is engulfed with confusion and unsatisfaction.. Sometimes we get so engrossed in our own self inflicted sufferings that we fail to notice and appreciate the pain on the multitude of anonymous faces in the crowd around us..
The other day it was in the newspapers that in Ajmer, begging is a Rs. 10 cr industry.. People are inducted, trained and then "paid" to beg on the hot, sweaty, reeling roads of this pilgrimage.. This does not mean that this is only limited to Ajmer.. For that matter, look at any pilgrimage centre or closer still any red light in Delhi - there are mutilated bodies, monkey faced children, girls in ragged clothes, small kids in older women's arms who are begging in front of you.. Sometimes I wonder how should I feel when I see them, should I take pity and give them something or should I just help my society get rid of another increasingly apathetical situation like poverty and its side effect - begging... My friends advice me to choose the second option, but... a lot of times this thought lingers on...
Why should I not give them something.. my friends say that whatever I give, it will never be with them at the end of the day... This is their revenue for the day, in place of which they get their daily "wages"...
A little farther away...
Have we ever reasoned, why are we following this religion.. or why is our name this and not that... Have we ever come across a situation when we grope for a safer place fearing that someone would see us, or hear our names , or come to know that we offer namaaz or do puja or make a cross to pray... No.. it has not happened with me till now.. But this has bothered people.. Post 9/11 thousands and thousands of Muslims have been illegally detained and tortured on the charges of "suspected terrorists" ... Soldiers have peed on them, subjected them to terrible music, beaten them nude, left them hanging upside down in sub freeing temperatures... And then at the end of all this, when they could not gather enough evidence to prosecute them as terrorists, allowed them to go free ..
After all this, did anyone ever go and ask these detainees, that whether they have managed to regain their respect... get jobs, get families... or most easily said - get a life.... the answer in most cases is a big "NO"..
Therefore, sometimes I also feel that when we look around and see the atrocities inflicted on people worldwide it becomes easier to live easily.. God has not given us that a bad life....
We are better off!
Thank you!
The other day it was in the newspapers that in Ajmer, begging is a Rs. 10 cr industry.. People are inducted, trained and then "paid" to beg on the hot, sweaty, reeling roads of this pilgrimage.. This does not mean that this is only limited to Ajmer.. For that matter, look at any pilgrimage centre or closer still any red light in Delhi - there are mutilated bodies, monkey faced children, girls in ragged clothes, small kids in older women's arms who are begging in front of you.. Sometimes I wonder how should I feel when I see them, should I take pity and give them something or should I just help my society get rid of another increasingly apathetical situation like poverty and its side effect - begging... My friends advice me to choose the second option, but... a lot of times this thought lingers on...
Why should I not give them something.. my friends say that whatever I give, it will never be with them at the end of the day... This is their revenue for the day, in place of which they get their daily "wages"...
A little farther away...
Have we ever reasoned, why are we following this religion.. or why is our name this and not that... Have we ever come across a situation when we grope for a safer place fearing that someone would see us, or hear our names , or come to know that we offer namaaz or do puja or make a cross to pray... No.. it has not happened with me till now.. But this has bothered people.. Post 9/11 thousands and thousands of Muslims have been illegally detained and tortured on the charges of "suspected terrorists" ... Soldiers have peed on them, subjected them to terrible music, beaten them nude, left them hanging upside down in sub freeing temperatures... And then at the end of all this, when they could not gather enough evidence to prosecute them as terrorists, allowed them to go free ..
After all this, did anyone ever go and ask these detainees, that whether they have managed to regain their respect... get jobs, get families... or most easily said - get a life.... the answer in most cases is a big "NO"..
Therefore, sometimes I also feel that when we look around and see the atrocities inflicted on people worldwide it becomes easier to live easily.. God has not given us that a bad life....
We are better off!
Thank you!
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