The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I don’t usually like to comment on the society and it ways, mostly because I am not eligible and partly because after all, we are all hypocrites aren't we?

But the events that happened the day before yesterday inside a LAW college campus and just behind the High court of the state, made me loosen up on my notepad ethics.

The scene:

Almost all the local cable channels played the gruesome reel a thousand times that night, of a group of armed students beating the life out of two people. The events are being video graphed amidst the presence of a decent police turnout, media and the locals. The arms included sticks, Iron rods, tube lights, a knife and a shovel. It was a LAW college which is behind the state's highest judicial office. The people who brandished sticks and rods were students, people in early 20s.

There have been hues and cries over the past two days of politicians, media and the students themselves of the failure in the system and of the police to take charge of the situation. For a while I even thought they were right, but for starters it was not just the police that were witness to the event. Come to think of it, even if the police were muted, where is the human in the students? And the last time the police went in to a college for riot control there were the same hues and cries of police over handedness.

So where was the real problem? With the police watching muted? The principal of the college not taking enough steps to curb the rivalry? With the media video taping it?

where did they get the knives, crowbars from ? what are they doing in student's hands? what was the issue that led to this merciless carnage? Are they even students ? if they are is it a law school ? too many questions, too little answers, too many rumours.

A few incidents that I have been in myself…

When I was at college and a brawl started, I was kicked twice in my knees for trying to push away the rivals.

This one time I turned in to a small road on my bike, there were three 20 some things standing in the middle of the road, my repeated horns doing nothing to them. Obviously drunk all three of them wanted to pick up a fight, they almost had me telling me my friend mouthed filth and in the local language. My friend was from another state and he rarely spoke my language.

Yet another place yet another day, this 20 something slapped a petite 20 something because he came in the way of his bike. And that was not all; the petite was actually calling his friends on his mobile to push it further.

Why do we use hands more than we use the mouth? Where is the whole meaning of being HUMAN? What do we even get out this petty bullying and being the boss? Why isn’t life precious to every one?

Imagine getting beaten up by at least 10 people with iron rods and pipes, the bastards even targeted the scalp. I had a head ache just watching the video for a while, my room mates cringed every time the guy was getting hit and I can't fathom children and women watching it. To their credit the two students getting hit did not go down easily either, they had long knives in hands and slashed them hard before they went down fighting.

Even if the rivalry was that worse, how would you even want to hurt some one mercilessly? Accidentally knocking on to a wooden cot takes the breath out of me and the gang went about smashing the two students with Iron bars even as they lay immobile, lifeless to even cry out of pain. And the best part, the day after in a few other law colleges in the state, students ransacked the college for reasons their Gods wouldn't know.

The students beaten up lie in hospitals bandaged all over, of crushed bones, innumerous cuts and a very uncertain future.

If the police weren't acting what was the media doing? Videotaping for the TRPs? What were the numerous locals doing? Watching it first hand? What were the other 'sensible' students doing? Worried about their future?

To me it seems like it wasn’t the police’s mistake, it wasn’t the now suspended Principal’s mistake, it wasn’t the Media’s problem and neither was it the locals’ concern.

It was the bloody animals themselves and in the world that we now live in there is little that can be done… Because when one world is talking of recession, economy, liquidity, health care, poverty, AIDS, LHC and the Moon, the other world is busy mooting terrorism, hatred, violence and crime.

"Theethum nanrum pirar thara vaara"
You are the good and the bad that happens to you..