Basic human rights seem denied to the human being. There’s violence and brutality unleashed all over. Biases and prejudices and communal slants worsen the situation.
I’m filing this column just before the start to the Human Rights Day – 10 December. Time to think aloud: What’s become of human beings? A large percentage are living so very pathetically, just about surviving in dismal circumstances, with uncertainty hovering around about what the future could hold out.
Here in our country it is not just the sheer poverty that’s eating into lives but also the various traumas denting psyches. There’s also crept in, into the system, a strange sort of indifference and insensitivity to the plight of the human beings. During my journalistic journeys to the various parts of this country, I have met families who have horrifying stories to recount how their young went missing, picked up for interrogation and then either declared missing/ thrown in the missing registers, or else remain untraceable. Yes, there are missing human forms in every part of this land yet the state is seemingly unaccountable. This is an absolutely harsh reality of the times we are living in.
Where are our missing? No clue! Taking you still further…Correct me if I’m wrong but a high percentage of the young found loitering around unescorted along the lanes and by-lanes could be sexually exploited; raped or near-raped and molested. And with that in the background or foreground, one can well imagine the level of tortures and disasters getting inflicted on the forms and psyches of the young.
The hapless young wouldn’t know how to get out of the clutches of their tormentors. They wouldn’t know where to go for counselling or care or for safe shelter. Their agony and plight only gets compounded as days pass by…and the very ruthlessness of the system and our systematic insensitivity wrecks their remains. Whatever remains to them and to their torn apart lives and forms and souls! Nothing! We are losing hundreds of our fellow citizens to the barbaric ways of today’s dark times.
Tell me, with all the security phobias hitting the rulers of the day, can a human being even think in terms of nearing any one of them to talk aloud, about his or her grievances or laments? No, they can’t. They could be booked, if not detained.
It is a truly grim picture, as the very basic human rights seem denied to the human being. There’s violence and brutality unleashed all over. Biases and prejudices and communal slants worsen the situation.
To compound the gravity, there is no curbing and censoring of what’s screened on the big and small screens. Those thrusts, pelvic and bosomy, are disgustingly obscene, and also some of the dialogues reek of perversion. Young viewers are not to be blamed if they feel that if the so-called top film stars can get away with those pelvic thrusts and moves in that Dabang way, so why not them!
All that glitters and shines in those gaudy ways on the big and small screens carries hollowness and obscenity with severely dangerous offshoots. The Who’s Who in the filmi setups might come across as dashing but not their utterances and moves and offloads!
And let me quote these lines from Khushwant Singh’s autobiography – Truth, love & a little malice (Penguin ):
I quote Khushwant Singh – “Being the editor of a popular weekly, I was much sought after by the film industry. I never was, nor am, much of a film-goer. And the little I’d seen of Hindi movies did not generate any respect for actors, directors, producers and music composers or playback singers. Some of my Lahore friends had done well- Balraj Sahni, Uma Kashyap (Kamini Kaushal) and Dev Anand were highly rated actors ; BR Chopra was among the top producers directors; Chetan Anand had many flops to his credit …My interest in film personalities was quickened by Devyani Chaubal, the younger sister of Nalini who had worked with me briefly in London. I had read Devyani’s bitchy pieces on the private lives of film stars written in a brand of Hindustan-English (Hinglish) which I enjoyed. Devyani took me to Raj Kapoor’s private cinema to see the opening shots of Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram. I took along members of the Sindhi family who lived above me – Sheila, her daughter Jyoti and their maid servant Fatima, all very eager to meet the great actor. Zeenat Aman was present. I sat between Raj Kapoor and Zeenat. Devyani was in the row behind, with my guests. We saw Zeenat stepping out of a village pond with her wet sari clinging to her body and displaying her shapely bust … ‘I am a bosom man’ said Raj to me with enthusiasm, “Aren’t you?” I agreed that shapely bosoms had their points. ‘What’s your laal paree (red fairy) like?,’ he asked. He was referring to Sheila who was draped in a bright red sari. He assumed she was my mistress.
‘I have no idea.’ I replied
‘Go on, you so and so!,” he insisted. ‘She looks all right to me. But one can’t really tell what’s inside the blouse, can one?’ “
