For nearly a month I have been at home, with foot in plaster, hobbling around, and for some unexplainable reason my husband turns on the TV before leaving for work, tuning into one news channel or the other. Perhaps, he thinks I should not lose touch with the world outside because of my forced exile. I usually mute it after a bit because re-eally television gives repetition an all new definition. Heard of a stuck record…goes on and on. Even tutored from birth parrots cannot be so mind-numbing repetitious as our poor, dear
telly anchors.
Anyways, there I was, sitting on my bed with a cup of “haldi-doodh” (so far its medicinal properties have not shown its efficacy on expediting my recovery) when I was about to silence the television. Reaching out for the remote, which has a way of straying under one of the pillows or playing rookie by hiding in the folds of the sheet, I spilled some of the concoction on myself, and so was pulling out tissue to mop up, when the ghastly news of how a security guard of a Judge had brandished his gun, shooting his employer’s wife and son. This on October 13th, in broad daylight, in a bustling market in Gurgaon. Prior to shooting the Judge’s wife he had thrashed her and shot her in the chest, stomach. Dhruv, the son, was shot thrice—two bullets in the brain after which the bodyguard tried dragging him into the car. Ritu, his mother, died on the spot, I assume. The poor 18-year-old was never going to be out of the woods… being brain-dead and on life-support; breathing his last on Tuesday.
Enough of reporting—everyone knows of this disquieting (to use a feeble word) incident. Not surprisingly, a little after this spine-chilling episode hit home, a friend in London rushed a WhatsApp wanting to know what had gone wrong with the world…if it had happened in the UK people would be running for cover using their mobiles to phone the police. In America, they’d be ducking for life, believing the bodyguard might be armed with a trunk of ammunition. They, however, would also be using their cells calling 911, Emergency. Here people in the crowded market were using their phones to take pictures, make videos and then WhatsApping the same to hundreds of friends with a single press of the thumb. Pawing the Broadcast App, with a planet full of humans receiving, at the same instant, the image in a nano-minute. Adding below, captions that they were very much at the scene, an arm’s stretch from where these gory inhuman attacks had taken place a minute back. Further adding, TV crews were yet to arrive at the location. I would not at all be nonplussed if some were taking pouting selfies, using the murderous site as the backdrop. Gloating how they had, without any sweat, done the “Breaking Story” before the TV vans, with their ubiquitous dish antennas, alighted atop the Carriers, had made a show.
The sickening volume of soul-curdling videos live-streaming on Instagram by 24X7 Tech-holics, the upper-hand smugness, high-speeding their faces. It would not be a source of amazement if the film had already made its way into the Guinness World Records. But to, for a minute, pause back to Mahipal Singh, the Judge’s bodyguard. Bodyguard—his job, to protect those, in whose service he was. To safeguard, shield, shelter the people who have entrusted their lives’ security in his care. At the cost of his own life. The head-scratching bafflement: Can the brain burst a fuse to this extent?! A scrambled mind split wide open unbridling a bloodthirstiness?! Savagery?! Barbarity?! Surely, the man did not grow into a monster overnight?! Must not his mind be murderously mulling over some triggering matter?! And since he had been “guarding” the family for over two years, no symptoms of festering septic thoughts making it to the face?! A few months ago my husband sent me a WhatsApp video, and me vehemently video averse—WhatsAppians “on” at all hours, the ping making them drop whatever it is at hand, leading them, a la Pied Piper, to WhatsApp La La Land—demanded an explanation. Calmly, no clarification given, in a minimalistic sentence, he asked me, “to see it whenever I wanted to…” I do not recall whether it was the girl who hailed from the supposed upper caste or the boy…how could one from an “upper caste” marry someone from a “lower one” and vice versa? This falling under the ultimate transgression.
The girl was hurled on the ground, kicked with feet gone zealot, grabbed by her hair and slung around. Bare and exposed. Her partner’s fate no better—repeatedly booted in the private parts. (By now nauseous waves had got the better of me and returned to the unspeakably nightmarish clip much later.) The undraped wife was then mounted on the shoulders of the disrobed husband, her drooping legs asunder, to be displayed for all to ogle. Did I miss mentioning that all was made to befall while mobiles had been open-mouthed, open-eyed lecherously lashed out to capture “this” for “posterity”. To watch, re-watch, and send all over for it to, but of course, in minutes, before one can say “go”, go viral.
We, a people, no longer needing to peep into a keyhole to satiate one’s smutty squinting. It is all out there in the open to snatch, to lay collective voyeuristic itchy hands that with synchronous haste whip out their mobiles to ensnare for at any time, all-time screen-time…
Dr Renée Ranchan writes on socio-psychological issues, quasi-political matters and concerns that touch us all