Further north, in Delhi, four ex-chairmen of large companies sat in the coffee room of the CII and shook their heads. Said one: "I had told them, 'Five years after liberalisation, take stock of the pulse of the people....' But for 15 years, all that has happened is a reckless pursuit of growth. Arre, economy ko liberate kiya, lekin people are still in mental bondage! We have changed the government four times in this period. Where is literacy? There has to be a steady pace. Man's mind has to develop before his material index does. Otherwise, he will not know how to use all the increase in income. Just see this... this boy is as young as my grandson! This is shameful." The other chairman said: "Today, some TV guys were at my house. Wanted to know why we are giving this so much importance. Idiot.
"I told him, 'Yes, this loss is important for the country if you consider the numbers. Every year, over 3 lakh students appear for the CAT. Twelve hundred are selected. Twenty five per cent leave the country. So it's more than just a life lost - it's a bright, honest person, with preserved albeit untamed integrity who knew the risks involved and had the courage to stay on the front. Or else, he too could have asked like you, Why are you giving adulteration so much importance? isn't it? As an institution builder, I am saying this country has very, very few like Manjunath. So when one of them is lost, it is important.'"
In Mumbai, Mridula, a journalist, looked up at her colleague and said: "This morning, my mother was telling my brother, 'Please don't get into any kind of arguments over anything with anybody. Koi Satyavaan nahin ban-na hai...!' You know what these boys and girls will take back from this incident? When on the job, quit your principles and beware! This is something they don't need, Ankush..." He said: "Why are we only grieving for this boy? Because he is an IIM graduate? What about the many poor people who are killed by the mafia?"
"Spoken like a true, well-fed, protected, intellectual bourgeoisie!" said Mridula. "Did you do anything about the poor who were killed by the mafia? No, because they were not your kind. So now, here is someone of your kind who was killed! Now Ankush, now can we do something?! This is our problem, Ankush. We are a country of thinkers, not doers. We know how to audit, but we don't know how to account! There is nothing wrong about the death of 'one of us' getting more publicity. In our newspaper, a death of an American soldier in Iraq gets the same coverage as five Indian jawans in Kashmir and 50 Iraqi civilians. Sometimes, these incidents do help create awareness, which would otherwise never have happened. Satyendra Dubey's death did more to fight corruption in the National Highway project than any amount of anti-corruption drives.
"We are not grieving only for this boy, although right now we are grieving for him. Those who are grieving are firstly shocked. Because until now, it happened to others - people they didn't know. Now it has happened to 'us', to straight people we know... see? That's when it comes as a shock. It shocks when crime is closer to your home and not far away somewhere in the wilderness, happening to people whose values we know nothing about. Then, they are grieving because they 'know' this guy, have seen him, touched him, walked with him, seen him as a good awesome soul... and at their age, these 25-year-olds are saying, 'Didn't he stand for all the good teachings of life? He was picture perfect! How can you do this to him?'
"Their shock forces them to ask 'Can I continue to believe all that I learnt till now? Has the time come for me to revise my learnings? Is it good to be good, after all?' That is the nature of their shock, Ankush. All parents tell their kids, 'Achche se padho, naukri karo, khush raho' - prescriptions for leading a clean straightforward life. Because education was meant to prevent you from taking to crime, but it doesn't hesitate while offering you as a victim of crime!"
Mridula called an MBA student for his reaction. He said: "We students believe that this is a huge community of the well bred and the educated. We feel that big corporates are backing us, that they are with us and that we are safe to pursue our honest intentions. All these big people investing big money in big projects look so credible and clean and nice... like our fathers. The whole business community appears so dependable. But honestly, when I read this sort of news, I am scared. You know what one chap told me? Is life worth just a few minutes of mention on NDTV and some loving notes on Yahoo! chat groups? Why take 'panga' to prove dedication at the cost of one's life? We are human, Mridula, face it. What I am saying is a human derivation of the situation and the inference at this time. I am sure that's exactly what's on everyone's mind right now. Then, we blame IIT-IIM grads for going abroad."
Elsewhere in an MNC, managers were discussing the 'news' too. Being in denial was their only armour. Some believed this would never happen to an MNC; they too had found a way to establish distance between 'their kind' and 'our kind' of people. As long as we are different, we are safe, went the warped logic. Consultants blamed the profiteering in manufacturing companies and lack of a quality system. Consulting was safer, they felt; they didn't have to deal with third parties.
Back in the hospital on Thursday, Utsav felt safe with his grandpa. So was it about safety then? he wondered. No, it's about faith. It's also about being able to work and live among people who work and live like us. But he felt alone. Most people around him had bounced back to chasing sales, targets and planning where to eat lunch. He recalled some emails he had received. Many had passed off the incident as a 'normal thing'.
Friday morning, Utsav ran into his HR head, Kapil. Drawing him into his room, Kapil said: "I am sorry, Utsav... really, really sorry. Time will heal all this." Utsav looked at him sadly and said: "That's what I am worried about. Time will heal all this, and we would have forgotten Machaan's fight. Trouble is, time does not heal attitudes! Will time change our callousness, our insensitivity, our greed for power and money? This is what amazes me. Why are we all in denial? Why do we want all this to be 'over' soon? Like a bad dream or a wound that has left an ugly scar? Why do we want to return to comfort zone again? Everyone I meet shrugs it off as 'yeh sab life mein hota hai...' Don't we have any other way to think about this? Kapil, we have become so desensitised to the media reports of crime, attacks, wars, earthquakes and tsunamis that the related human emotion of pain is something we can only intellectualise and find solutions for immediately. But we cannot feel it.
"Here is a guy who is saying he has just lost everything he ever possessed in the tsunami. And we have a solution: we give him a cheque for Rs 1,001. What he wants is an arm around his shoulder, maybe a hug, maybe he wants you to feel his pain? Sometimes, people just want to tell you how bad their pain is.
"Read these reports, Kapil. Each one is saying: book the culprits, punish them, etc. This is not the solution! That's my point. Relate to the situation, relate to the pain... feel the pain of the aggressor too! Yes, the pain of ignorance! Do we know what causes them to be deviant? So the law will book them... then what? This is like my nephew. When he sees a cockroach, he will jump onto the table and shout, 'Usko maro, kaka!' But where did the roach come from? Isn't that the point we have to address? What has caused our people to become valueless?
I remember a verse our grammar teacher would give us, which I then thought was weird: 'When brother raises hand to slay brother, who has thought for the sorrowing mother?' Even that culprit is our own kind, Kapil. In each of us lurks a killer. The difference is simple: one has killed, one hasn't yet...
"I know, a lot of people are rationalising, 'MBA tha. Is liye shor macha rahe ho!' Absolutely! Because the only people today who can, if they choose to change the fabric and tenor of our country, are the educated. But they haven't chosen to yet. But this could well be a wake-up call. Finally, each of us is responsible for all this. We are all busy embellishing our lives. We have extracted a few 'values' from here and there, and we watch over them like vultures. It's okay by us to live in a corrupt, unjust society but we cannot tolerate an Id procession in front of our temples. We 'need' a few 'values' to hang our egos on, and never mind what those values are. Because we have no time; our targets and toplines have to be delivered. Yes, we have become insensitive, uncaring and overwhelmed by our economic brilliance. We are the real criminals, we who pass this off as yet another incident. Why blame the law, the government, the system... we have empowered them, no? We allowed voting age to be lowered to 18, no? D
id we ponder? No. We are an ambitious people and we have time only for 'important' matters... we are the tribe who read a financial newspaper cover to cover and we know about Jim Watts' corner drugstore; we know who are the top seven richest men in the world and the movements of the indices on the BSE and NSE...
"Machaan's cause scares us because none of us can do what he did. Worse, we will not. I know I cannot. That is why we have coined very nice phrases like 'But life must go on', 'Time is the best healer'.... That's the only way we can drop this incident and forget it before it covnsumes us!"
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Related links
Analysis 1: Achal Bhagat
Analysis 2: Subhabrata Ghosh
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