Indifference

Traffic crawls along; shops open to the trickle of prospective customers. A middle-aged man combing the scant hair on his balding head, as if Cupid finally answered his prayers. Or maybe he is just a staunch believer in putting his best foot forward for any customer who might happen to wander into his shop.

A bunch of know-nothing-do-nothings stand in group, discussing something animatedly, all the while pointing towards an old tree. Rumor has it that an unclaimed suitcase containing a bomb has been abandoned under that tree, and that the Bomb Disposal Squad is on its way.

Three youngsters - a photographer, and two writers (one of them, me) - sit across the road, smoking their cigarettes and listen to contradicting explanations as to the cause of the chaos on the other side of the road, watching a story unfold. The photographer gets his camera ready, shrugs and says, “Only if there’s a bomb blast will there be a point in taking pictures”. Ah, apathy - that ruthless slayer of all feelings humane.

Two or three cops half-heartedly shoo away the thronging crowd. Life moves on at its own lazy pace in this industrial area in west Delhi, impending bomb blast notwithstanding. Everything seems normal, except the slight buzz of activity and gossip which is promptly drowned out by the louder sounds of traffic. There is no hue and cry. Nothing is disrupted. And people from different walks of life, wait for something, anything to break the monotony of the day; even if it’s a bomb. Never mind that unsuspecting pedestrians and motorists are within meters of the suspected bomb. Never mind that each and every shop around the ‘suspicious, unclaimed suitcase’ is open. Never mind that curious good-for-nothings are gathering by the dozens in the vicinity of the ‘cordoned off area’.

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News honchos running around yelling ‘Khelo! Khelo!’ Play on the story, for as long as possible. “Because that’s where the TRPs are”, I completed the sentence in my head, as comprehension dawned. When I first witnessed this scene, I was stumped. By the businesslike approach to the tragedy that was unfolding before us. Two bombs had gone off inside two separate local trains in Bombay. As I stood there taking the information in, two weeks into my job in a news channel, news petered in that five more bombs had gone off across the length of Bombay. The refrain of ‘Khelo! Khelo!’ reached an unbelievable crescendo.

I had always known it was a business – the business of making news. But I hadn’t anticipated what I was witnessing. Phone lines and means of communications weren’t the only things that were disrupted. What I was seeing was a complete breakdown of that one thing that binds us all in one thread, never mind caste, creed, gender, region or even religion. I saw humanity fall apart and a calculative business-sense take its place. A capitalist, individualistic world does that. It breeds indifference.