Ever had that sudden urge of doing something born purely out of reflex, almost comparable to a Tourette's tick? Like that chat head or the news feed, you keep randomly checking repeatedly even though it has not updated in the past couple of hours? Me too! As a matter of fact, I'm going through something similar at this very moment! Only a few seconds ago, I Was on the verge of falling asleep, yet, now, I am in front of the keyboard with a blank head while my fingers are typing away their fill.
Many things have been going on recently, which slowly have made their way up into my temple, causing unrest. It hurts to see the place that was seemingly calm and peaceful the night before turning into a war zone when the day breaks. And in such situations, for some reason, people who are mentally challenged do not get any sympathy from family, peers, and the rest of humanity.
Only 5 days ago, a man named "Shahidunnabi" with severe schizophrenic tendencies entered into a mosque and vandalized the holy books. An act if you take his mental conditions into account is not even a tiny bit blasphemous. Yet, In retaliation, the most prolific and religious leaders of that small community decided to lynch him. A half-hour 'stomping him until he turned into chum' later, they burned his body on the street while their toddlers and wives spectate, thinking something exciting must be happening!
A friend of mine, whose house is very close to that street had sent a 27 min long footage. It covers the total duration, the lynching, I mean, him getting dragged along the street by the mob while he was alive and then his charred body getting dragged into the ambulance by the police. I had sat there for the whole duration, watching and trying to tell myself, 'look at it, this is the world you live in, and this is where you have to create your legacy. Among the stupid masses and a population with an average IQ of less than the domestic animals!'
But this too was not it!
It's precisely 7:05 am, and only two hours ago, a neighbor of mine, "Daulat," has committed suicide. Another mentally ill dude but even more so a dedicated police officer. When I took up criminology, he jokingly said that, even though he is 13 years older than me and has seen me in diapers, I might one day become his superior. Ah, what a naïve yet jolly guy he was!
For the last 2 years, he has been on a paid leave due to having Parkinson's disease. His wife, with whom his marriage was like straight out of those Rom-Coms teen girls' love, left within six months and took their twin infants along with her. While living alone, being unable to cope with reality, he decided to end it once and for all. Took up the thickest belt he had and hanged himself with it. Another casualty of human selfishness! And yet this too is not the end of it, at least for me.
I have a massive friends group, or at least I did until Covid hit. In times of such leisure, all of us used to play short pitch cricket. A heavily watered-down format of the standard version of this sport. And so has been going on for almost a decade now! Among them, we had this friend, "Tarek", whose family's financial condition was somewhat uneasy. Last Saturday, authorities from the local government had to take him away by force and admit him to a mental institute. There was a bus accident last year which had killed his family except him and his mum. But the omnipotent had to play one last crude joke on them. Last Saturday, his mum died. And the poor kid tried to buy surgical equipment to revive his mum, and the pharmacist had alerted the police. Yeah! Makes you think, doesn't it?
To get a sense of self-gratification, we watch dystopian films, to see ourselves in the protagonist's shoes, and think about what we would do differently and how the scenarios might play out. I'd hate to be the one to break the bubble, but if you look closely, there are millions of Tareks and Daulats living all around us, and we already are living in a dystopia. It is just that we humans are incredibly habitual creatures, we have already adapted to all the wrongs, and now we are accustomed to the mishaps in reality; by shrouding ourselves in fantasy. Not for long perhaps, but it makes living life easy, eh!