Newspaper headlines:
“Seven year old boy sodomized and set on fire.”
“Woman stabbed multiple times by an estranged lover.”
“Delhi road rage: Man killed as children watch.”
“Beef ban just the beginning, State tells HC, may extend it.”
As a child, I had asked my mother how garbage sorters work in the dumping ground.
Does the stink not affect them?
She said that they’ve worked there for so long, they don’t smell it anymore.
Their noses are insensitive to garbage.
Maybe it goes the same way for us.
Rotten rape cases, stinky violence cases, old abuse cases
All go unnoticed even when they are right under our noses.
Insensitive noses, these.
Why would you blame us, then, for tweeting about a hit and run case only when it involves an actor?
For reading ‘sodomized’ and registering it as a new word for rape and moving on to the next headline?
For sidelining the aforementioned headlines, except the last one because hey, this one affects us all directly. Smells new.
A rape case will not lead to candlelight marches unless it’s a gruesome rape.
A story of abuse will not make it to anyone’s Facebook status unless it’s of a yesteryear celebrity.
That ‘man killed in front of kids’ story would get not get attention, unless it happened outside Delhi.
Delhi is, as we say, like that only.
There will be no protests and morchas demanding sentence to death for the abusers of that little seven year old child, and that, I cannot fathom why.
I do not know what ‘unless’ clause goes with it, but I fear it is ‘unless the boy is dead’.
35% burns are not worthy enough of our social media space.
Go ahead. Rub your nose.
Mumbai Snoopies 