Urban Anger
The daily haggling with auto drivers is a menace and makes me so angry. In fact a lot of time I become verbally aggressive and have been close to being physically so. Yesterday when I reached home I was fuming inside but was very calm on the outside and did not allow myself to be dragged into that bad after taste. But when I was climbing up the stairs I surely said to myself, "One day I will kill someone."
Today when I opened the news papers in the morning and saw the incident at Virginia Tech University and how 33 people had lost their lives to an angry jilted lover it really shook me up completely. I could not believe someone would be so angry that he would take numerous innocent lives without a second thought. I am guilty of watching and reading all available material on crime scene related issues on television and in print but to imagine someone going on a killing spree because he could not deal with certain rejection just came as very shocking.
I have decided consciously to stay calm under all situations and never allow modern day city stress to get the better of me. Thankfully in India one cannot carry a weapon as self defense. In a country like USA it is the individual freedom which supersedes the cause of humanity at large. In spite of having a defense mechanism in place the average American citizen feels at rage all the time. Why so? They are definitely better of financially than the average Indian. Then what pushes them to such extremes?
I believe it the loneliness that comes free with individual freedom is at the crux of this problem. People are self absorbed in their own miseries as they find less and less attached to any kind of kindredness. Here the man went overboard because the only real thing in his life was probably the girl friend he had and her rejection suddenly made him "alone". We as the citizens of the modern urban cities are becoming enraged as we move away from families, neighbors, friends, relatives and plunge into the virtual world of all things techie. It is a very alarming situation where we can think of killing somebody without batting an eye lash.
But I would still like to believe that we can do something about it, simple gestures like calling on the neighbors, writing a letter to a friend or a cousin, talking to our parents probably will calm us down, cherishing acts such as looking after a garden or a pet or simply a child will also calm our ever strained nerves to a great extent. This will be the way for me personally to handle my rage!
Today when I opened the news papers in the morning and saw the incident at Virginia Tech University and how 33 people had lost their lives to an angry jilted lover it really shook me up completely. I could not believe someone would be so angry that he would take numerous innocent lives without a second thought. I am guilty of watching and reading all available material on crime scene related issues on television and in print but to imagine someone going on a killing spree because he could not deal with certain rejection just came as very shocking.
I have decided consciously to stay calm under all situations and never allow modern day city stress to get the better of me. Thankfully in India one cannot carry a weapon as self defense. In a country like USA it is the individual freedom which supersedes the cause of humanity at large. In spite of having a defense mechanism in place the average American citizen feels at rage all the time. Why so? They are definitely better of financially than the average Indian. Then what pushes them to such extremes?
I believe it the loneliness that comes free with individual freedom is at the crux of this problem. People are self absorbed in their own miseries as they find less and less attached to any kind of kindredness. Here the man went overboard because the only real thing in his life was probably the girl friend he had and her rejection suddenly made him "alone". We as the citizens of the modern urban cities are becoming enraged as we move away from families, neighbors, friends, relatives and plunge into the virtual world of all things techie. It is a very alarming situation where we can think of killing somebody without batting an eye lash.
But I would still like to believe that we can do something about it, simple gestures like calling on the neighbors, writing a letter to a friend or a cousin, talking to our parents probably will calm us down, cherishing acts such as looking after a garden or a pet or simply a child will also calm our ever strained nerves to a great extent. This will be the way for me personally to handle my rage!
Comments
Ever since the unfortunate shooting at Virginia Tech, everyone has been pushing their own agenda as to what caused the event. There is Jack(ass) Thompson and Dr. Phill (another jackass) putting the blame on Video games. The whole gun control lobby is blaming the guns. And of course everyone else is using the incident to promote their own ideas of what led to this.
We do not know the shooter as a person. In fact we know very little other than the fact that he was a 23 year old South Korean student at the university. I am staggered at the attempt to explain away the incident by "guns", "family","loneliness", "video games" or whatever takes your fancy.
We don't know. I think it is better to accept that, rather then belittle this tragedy by labeling it as anything other than what it is - a "senseless tragedy".
My niece's husband killed himself last month. We do not know why. He lived next door to his parents. Had friends and family around him all the time. Yet he had a medical history of depression, and was on medication for it. At his funeral, the funeral home was overwhelmed by the number of people that came, and stayed the entire time. The did not have room for all the people, so people stood outside. They were his friends and family.
By the way, let me take this opportunity to set the record straight as far as family ties go, here in the US, at least where I live. Almost every weekend we spend time with relations, and most of our friends, (who are not family) do the same. We have family dinners every time someone decides that there has not been a get-together for a while, which is about once a month. The women discuss the absent relation, just like the do in India, and so-and-so who is having an affair and all that good stuff. My two best buddies are my brother-in-law and my nephew.
Anyway, coming back to my niece's husband, we knew him, and spent time with him. We still don't know why. His wife is shattered. They loved each other and you could see it. But we will always wonder -WHY, and resign ourselves to the fact that we will never know. And we miss a friend.
Let us just wish in our hearts that ones left behind get strength to go thru this utterly horrible feeling of loss and helplessness. And hope that none of us ever have to go thru something like this.
Humans from all corners of this earth do crimes against the innocent on a daily basis. Yes, the 33 killed in Virgina was one of the large scaled occurances. But surely you have not been blind or deaf to all the others.
Here are some headlines I found:
At least 66 killed in blasts on "Peace Train" in India.
Kerbala - A suicide car bomber killed up to 50 people and wounded more than 70 at a crowded bus station in the Iraqi holy city of Kerbala on Saturday, police said.
Heavy fighting between Pakistani tribesmen and foreign militants has left 50 people dead - mostly Uzbeks and Chechens. About a thousand tribesmen, armed with rocket and machine guns, attacked the suspected militants, in the biggest cross border assault to date in southern Waziristan.
More than 50 people were killed when an army ammunition depot exploded outside the capital, Maputo, on Thursday, said a United Nations official, citing reports.
"We have also learnt that more than 150 people have been injured," said Miguel Barreiro, the UN project coordinator of the small arms and light weapons control intervention in Mozambique. The toll is expected to rise.
JAKARTA, Jan 23 — Violence in eastern and western Indonesia claimed at least 34 lives, authorities and news reports said today, as bloodshed continued to plague this sprawling south-east Asian nation.
AT least 43 persons were killed and 140 injured in two powerful bomb explosions in South Mumbai on Monday, at Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar.
Both bombs placed inside taxi boots went off a little while after 1 p.m., police officials said. Earlier in the day, there were rumours of blasts at four to five different spots, all laid to rest by evening with official confirmation of only two.
At Least 40 Dead In Sunnis - Shias Clash In Pakistan
(RTTNews) - Saturday, in a gun battle between Sunnis and Shias, at least 40 people dead and 43 wounded in Parachinar, Pakistan, officials said.
ALGIERS, Algeria - A series of deadly attacks Wednesday in Algeria were a devastating setback for the North African nation’s efforts to close the chapter on its Islamic insurgency that has claimed 200,000 lives.
With al-Qaida's claim of responsibility for the blasts that left at least 23 people dead and 160 wounded, some fear the years of unrest in Algeria — and North Africa in general — have returned.
Everyone single incidence that claimed the lives of others here has its own story behind it. And I only hope to show you that this world acts hastily and so often without remorse. Most of these may not been done by one single gun but could have easily been done with one hand that placed the bomb.
Is all of this Due to a LONELY world?
I do realise to you it might have been an incorrect assumption on her part according to you, but give her a break. Correct her but cut her some slack. She is new to it and if you blast her like that she will not be encouraged. And this is a blog not an editorial.
Generalisation is a fault with all of us, lets not crucify her for that. And dee, all those incidents you mentioned have had political or religious reasons behind. But US have seen plenty of school shootings where the reaon has been an "mentally unstable" child with a gun.
Understand that in a country like ours where guns are not common, and violance such as this is still very rare- we tend to look for clues to why it happened.....and can be faulted for generalisation. Can you seriously say that you have never generalised ever?
So, instead of jumping down her throat you might want to put in your point of view. It is better explained that way.
It is not a critique on the social or the political scenario. I believe when Nadine Gordimer wrote House Gun she had exactly the wretched feeling we all have when we can see the loved one die for no apparent fault of their own but just that a gun was very handy lying about in the house and could easily eliminate the unwanted room mate. As if it was his fault to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Leader
Wednesday April 18, 2007
The Guardian
Yesterday a 23-year-old South Korean student was identified as the gunman who slaughtered 32 people at Virginia Tech on Monday, in the worst campus shooting spree among a list of similar horrors that have become one of the defining features of the United States to the outside world. The US is not the only country in which random acts of gun violence have erupted in seemingly everyday circumstances to destroy lives, families and communities. But the US is one of the few countries that seems collectively unwilling and politically incapable of doing anything serious to stop such things happening again.
Whereas other countries - Britain after the 1996 Dunblane school massacre, Australia following the shootings in Tasmania the same year - have responded to such incidents by attempting to restrict access to guns, the US has not. Yesterday, as too often before, Americans instinctively drew together to mourn the dead and support the living. The president and the state governor both hurried to Blacksburg to lead and share the community's grief. Their expressions of solidarity are the right immediate response. But, if history is any guide, that is as far as it will go. Once again, the rest of the world will look on in amazement as America proves itself unable to defend its ordinary citizens from its armed maniacs.
The first duty of any government is to protect its people. But in this respect the United States government cannot. Opinion polls show that most Americans want the nation's gun laws to be stricter; often such polls reveal majorities of roughly two to one. Yet US leaders are held hostage by the power of the gun lobby and the electoral system. Most Republicans oppose gun controls of any kind anyway. But the formidable National Rifle Association is too potent a foe for any party to take on. Over the years the Democrats have made their choice. They can either campaign for gun control or win power, but not both; they prefer power.
There is a long-standing dispute about whether the bearing of arms was integral to the United States from the start or whether, had it not been for a later-developing gun-owning culture, the US would have the more balanced approach that exists across the border in Canada. One day, perhaps, the supreme court may decide. In the meantime, not even this week's events will change the political reality. Modest attempts to tighten gun control laws in the 1990s - by restricting access to certain heavy weapons, for example, or by strengthening background checks on buyers - were bitterly resisted at every level, especially in states such as Virginia. That enduring civic failure is one of the reasons why Virginia families are weeping over the graves of their dead children this week.
I just wanted us to think a bit deeper, and try to look at things from more than our point of view, when coming to a conclusion.
We generally do not consider insects as much of a life form, and kill them with abandon from childhood. But killing an animal or a bird is usually a very jarring experience. We prefer the butcher to do the job for us so that we can eat the meat. I served in the capacity of an unofficial butcher for a while in college, and dealt with the dirty part of transforming a goat into mutton. It is not pleasant. Now-a-days I hunt. Other than the groundhog that digs holes all thru my yard, I don't hunt anything that I will not eat. So I have to do the butchering part. Shooting, whether by gun or bow, sort of distances you from the killing. But cutting up a dead animal brings home all of that "jarring experience". Makes you think very hard before you decide to take the shot as to whether the animal in question is worth shooting. No point in going thru the whole process in freezing cold if you only get a couple of meal's worth of meat from it.
So yes, I am sure that however "disturbed" one is, if they were restricted to using a knife as a weapon, they would have to think a lot harder before deciding to stab 30 people to death.
But criminals the world over still carry guns, gun control or not. And since the general populace does not, they have an unfair advantage. Having lived in a troubled part of the country, there were so many times that I wished that we were allowed to own guns, since it would have equalized the odds a lot more.
Also, laws are only as good as they are implemented. Rather like the child labour laws in India, we do have gun laws here, and "straw purchases" are a felony. But they do happen.
And public opinion regarding varies from place to place. In urban north east US, it is the "in" thing. But once you go into rural America, the right to bear arms is taken very seriously. The state of New Hampshire has the motto "live free or die", and holds it very dear.
Even with the VTech incident, here is a piece from BBC's Matt Frei's article:
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On the sports field between the hall of residence where Cho Seung-Hui shot his first two victims and the Norris Hall where he gunned down the remaining 30, I spotted Chris Mucklow, a 22-year-old sociology student who loved soccer.
He was sitting by himself and crying silently. I asked him, whether he thought there should be stricter laws against gun ownership. "More background checks, absolutely," he replied. "But I wish I had had a gun that day. I wish some of the professors had had guns on them. They could have taken the shooter down."
It was an opinion I heard from many students at Virginia Tech and it goes beyond the abstract debate about the "right to bear arms", enshrined in the Constitution. It is about self defence in the face of a rampaging menace.
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And the counter view from the same article:
"But it strikes me that this is a reaction rather than a solution. "You can't control guns with more guns for chrissake". That's how Brendan Quirk, an engineering student who watched as the victims jumped from the second story windows of Norris Hall put it."
So there are 2 ways of looking at it, and as far as i am concerned, none of them are utterly wrong or utterly right.
As soon as we start believing that we are the ones that are right (hence everyone who does not go along with us is wrong), we turn into bigots.
be it US or india or anywhere else, we are so much guided by "countable" successes (including our relationships) that hearing a NO is the hardest thing to accept -- if u fail once, that is the end of ur life. my mother once told me that my didimia (my mom's mother) used to say whenever u wld feel that u havent got enough from life or u are not satisfied with what u have, look at the people below u, u wld understand how fortunate u are.
i am neither trying to oversimplify the problem nor i am saying it's any one country-centric, it rather depends on how materialistic and individualistic ur society is.
having said that i wld also like to draw a line between politico-religious/economic killings like explosions on indo-pak “peace” train or car bombs in baghdad or the trouble in Palestine or the contras in latin america. Dont open this pandora’s box. Then the first question wld be who supports the kashmiri militants and, in turn, who backs them, why iraq invasion or many problems in west asia smell so much of oil, why this war for “freedom” in iraq needed the alibi of biological weapons or, say, why contras often look as if they are in stars & stripes. I am sure there will be arguments and counter-arguments but all i want to say is they cannot be equated with virginia’s.
nor it wld be right if we compare an individual suicide with the killings of so many people. we shdnt club them. easy availability of guns cannot be the reason but it facilitates such murders. The fact that america records the highest number of virginia-like incidents -- and almost everywhere the weapon is a gun – must be saying something.
Last week, media in calcutta carried a story about a boy battering to death a friend over a game of cricket. Such stories are not yet very common in my country and they are individual vs individual but i fear that we are catching up here too, something we dont need to aspire to.
Whether it’s loneliness or not or a combination of many reasons, it shd be addressed and we shd help in whatever possible way we can. Becoz while we write blogs or comments on them, people who suffer are those who have lost their near and dear ones, including the korean student’s family.
Thank you for all the attention you have paid to my insignificant piece of writing, I am honestly flattered. But I guess we have said all we have about this tragic incident. Now let us move on. We all respect each others perspective on issues such as gun control and self defense so let us not dwell too long on this piece, which was written purely for therapeutic reasons. Hope you would all enjoy the senseless ramblings every now and then. Cheers!