Tiger Killed A Boy

All this hullabaloo about the white tiger killing a boy who fell into the tiger's enclosure made me wonder about so many things.

1. Over hyped media reaction? - Now I know its not every day that a person enters inside a tiger's enclosure in a zoo and never comes out alive. But I do feel that the whole incident was over-sensationalized. As soon as the news was reported the whole of Social Media was flooded with pictures and videos and various stories of what actually happened.
2. The Blame Game - This one was the most amusing aftermath. Some were blaming the tiger, others the zoo authorities, some the boy who jumped in, some the by-standers. There were memes and slogans and jokes and articles and misinterpretations and misrepresentation to pinpoint one culprit for the death of the youth.
3. A Weird Source of Entertainment - It all started with headlines saying young 'boy' was 'mauled/killed' by a tiger. And then every single person with access to internet was hooked to any news regarding the incident. Watching the pictures and the videos of killing became a morbid source of entertainment. People don't care whether the 'boy' was 20 or 22 (reports are contrary) nor did they care whether he jumped in willingly or accidentally fell inside the enclosure. The YouTube video of this incident has gone viral and the comments people are writing makes me wonder whether there is a drop of humanity in some or not. A man died! How on earth can that be entertaining? After all these years of development and advancement, is the human mind still barbaric?

What do you think about this whole affair? And whom do you thing was responsible? Do let me know in the comments below!

Is India truly free?

I know it’s been a long time since the Republic Day and Independence Day is far away. But I did want to post this on a regular non-teaming-with-patriotic-sentiments day.

I boarded a bus to go to my college one day, it was mostly empty (an unusual thing), and so I chose a comfortable window seat, looking out the window. A few stops later a woman boarded the bus, with a child in her arms, inspite of many empty seats to choose from, she sat beside me. I gave her a smile and resumed my gazing out of the window exercise.

She opened the conversation after a few idle minutes. Asked me where I was going, in return told me the place she was headed to, she asked what I studied, in what year I was and so on. We chatted genially asking a few more general questions to and fro and then she dropped the bomb on me.

“You are a Patel?”

I told her I wasn’t; she was mildly surprised, told me I looked like one. Moments later she asked me again, “So what caste do you belong to?” With respect and the same genial manner I told her that I was a Christian.

She put her baby on her shoulder, grabbed her bag, and without a word got up from my seat and went to sit on another far away seat at the back of the bus. I was numbed with shock. Unable to believe what had happened. After a while I collected my thoughts, chose not to take it too personally and began gazing out of the window again!

The incident shook me to the core. The India about which I studied in a Social Studies class and the India I met in real life where stark opposites of each other.