To Burn a Man Alive

“If you had been on that jury son, and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a free man. So far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process. Those are twelve reasonable men in everyday life, Tom’s Jury, but you saw something come between them and reason.”

- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

I by accident came upon this piece about the lynching of one Mr. Jesse Washington, a 17 year old boy way back in 1916 in a then little known town called Waco in Texas during the height of racism there. A 1600 strong, so called civilized mob cheered and celebrated the vindication of a boy. Who is to say whether he was guilty or not? They never cared. Their ears must have been where filled with the wax of racial hatred and their minds biased. That was the society then, there, apparently civilized and highly placed. Are we any different today?

We may have come far from burning people alive and conducting witch hunts, at least in principle we have. But deep down our society is the same, flawed and diseased. We may not be impaling people anymore and we definitely are not pushing widows to be burned along with their dead husbands, but that is where the buck stops. We do still engage in some very sinister things, don’t we? We murder our daughters before they are even born and we do that with more ease that the slaughter of a cow. We beat up our wives and abuse them. But these are normal things in our society today not as audacious as the lynching of Jesse Washington.

What we do in our day to day life is in no measure what we are capable of and it does not provide a true picture of the malice that lurks within the conceited society. In order to know what the society is truly capable of we must look what they do at times of great anarchy, when they are no longer a society but a mob, when they are nothing more than a bunch of rapid dogs on the hunt. They rape and they slaughter, they rip apart human life and bodies in the most disgusting manner possible. The discontent and instability that so lie in the depths of men manifest into its worst at such times. It is at such times, when the bonds and bondages enforced by the chains of society breakdown that the society becomes vengeful and disoriented. It is not even imaginable what a society that consists of murderers and rapist at the best times would disintegrate into when they come face to face with the darkness that lurks inside.

What we may now do in the name of justice be only the sinister things of tomorrow, may be generations next will speak of our barbaric ways with as much disgust as we speak of our generations past. Let it be the holocausts in Germany or the Lynching in Waco, the agitated ‘civilized societies’ has in there moment of folly written onto the face of sons and daughters a scar. A scar that for all the time to come will forever remain. May be nothing can be done about, may be that is the way of life, but I believe different. Many a great men have in the past opened our eyes and held it open just long enough to see our folly and prevent it in the time to come. May be at times of great peril will rise great heroes and they will save as times of great despair.

Shakespeare Anyone ?

An interesting observation seen in goodreads

Courtesy :  Goodreads

I shall lay down my worthless life

On a six pence parchment draw me damned line,
Give me a flag and a staff to hold,
A song to sing and a worthless lie,
Tell me a story and give me a speech,
Give me one reason and I shall ask no more
I shall lay down my worthless life
For every worthless lie you so tell me.

The Cardinal Sin

For they have eyes yet seldom see,

For they have ears yet seldom hear,

For the have hearts yet seldom feel,

For they have hands yet seldom act,

For all the cardinal sins upon this grave world,

The supreme sin is but this,

For they have minds they seldom think.

The Missing Girl Child

I still remember the joy my sister brought to our household, my sister would be my maternal aunt’s daughter, but she is not my cousin but my very sister itself. I have always wanted a sister, ever since I can remember. I always wish I had an elder sister who would scold me and whom I could fight with and I wish I had a younger sister whom I could cajole and spoil. I know these dreams are meant to remain unfulfilled, there is only so much one can do, no replacement would ever be real thing would it? Then what I can do is a have a daughter whom I can spoil, with whom I can fight and whom I can scold. Someone that I can say is truly mine and who will always be daddy’s best girl.

When I saw the woman in this video, who has murdered with her bare hands her several children on the eve of their birth, my heart was shaken. There was not a speck of remorse in her words, not a moment of self-doubt about her actions only the cold dignity of doing what she thought was right. What would have turned her into this ominous creature that stands defiantly in the face of modern society, a scar upon the face of civilization? To imagine those bleak hands wound around the neck of her own child who is still covered in blood and matter. The suppressed cries of the new born girl escaping from the otherwise strangled throat. The new born eyes vaguely making out the devil that her own mother has turned out to be, helpless and bewildered. For what has she done wrong to live the life of a may fly, to come and go and be forgotten in a heap of soil by the solitary fields.

Is being born a girl a crime, a mishap or one of the great misfortunes of the 21^st century? Why does a moment that would otherwise be a celebration of life turn into persistent gloom and prolonged misfortune? These are questions in the face of which the modern society shudders and lowers its head in shame. The so called pantheons of culture that we ourselves proclaim to be, has wittingly or unwittingly brought upon the women great misfortune and has subjected them to what can be called nothing other than slavery.

They can no longer legally find if the child is a girl before being born and hence they can’t kill her before she is even born so they lurk around till the moment of birth to don the black cloak of doom and kill there very daughters in the most cruel of ways imaginable. Many a visions of heal are much less revolting and terrifying than the sight of father bashing his own daughter to death under the silence of her mother. Where happens in utopia this gruesome scene.

Every child has the right to be born and every child irrespective of gender be allowed the world. I have longed for a daughter all my life and when at the moment it happened to be a boy, would I kill him? Would I even think about harming him? Even in the face of my many a dreams being shattered would I for one moment think that this innocent life in my hands deserves not to live? How could I even think that, for in my hand lies the miracle of life? All I could ever do is to love him and all I could ever think is to be his hero. Come what may be to kill a child is revolting and killing on the basis of its gender may very well be like buying a first class non-refundable ticket to the bottom hell.

We have the blunder of many a millennia to correct before us, we have to rectify the mistakes of several hundred generations which has caused, encouraged and supported this injustice. We have to with great patience and utmost dedication purify the society of its evils that has poisoned its very fabric. How this can be done is not for me to say for that we are well aware of. What we must ask ourselves is that whether we want it done? Whether the urgency is felt in our hearts and if so then the way is but a matter of taking.

This entry is a part of Franklin Templeton - The Idea Caravan