Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks

“Bombs rip through city”
“Serial blasts ravage town block”
“900 killed in massive explosion”

I have a theory about bombs. There’s neither any scientific backing for my theory, nor is there any evidence to back it up. There’s a to-scale model of the theory, but again, it isn’t especially conclusive or definitive. Here goes anyway...

My theory is that in the event of a bomb blast, it’s rarely ever the fire or the explosive energy that gets those in close proximity. Instead, I believe it’s the raw and primal shock of watching this ginormous ripping-at-the-seams of life just in front of one’s eyes. Of course, then there’s the sound and the eventual expulsion of energy that tears up everything in its path. But, they arrive much later. Way way after the shock.

The tiny to-scale model I was talking about has to do with trying to inflate a balloon. You blow into it and huff and puff. Your cheeks turn red and you’re out of breath. So you hold the end of the balloon tightly with your fingers and breathe in deeply. As you begin pumping this latest lungful of air into the balloon, it POPS!!!!

Your heart stands still for a second and you know that there is no way the popping balloon could have injured you in the least. Yet you flinch and jump. Shock.

Now back to bombs and in addition to shock, they inevitably create tragedy. Couple shock with tragedy and what you get is complete artistic fodder, journalistic fodder, terroristic (if the word doesn’t exist, it damn well should) fodder and many many other ‘stic’s of fodder.

Everyone loves a good tragedy — especially a tragedy replete with shock.

Some filmmaker will ‘capture the emotions’ of those whose lives have been torn apart by the tragedy and turn it into a heart-wrenching film that wins the maker of that exploitative movie a ton of accolades. While the victims get a nickel!

With a twiddle of some aspiring poet’s fingers around a pen, the tragedy is re-moulded, reconstructed and re-imagined amid a flowery smattering of clichés (Everyone loves a good cliché, too) and half-baked similes to once again earn the poet praise for the ‘sensitivity’ conveyed.

A journalist will be honoured for ‘pushing the envelope’ and bringing in a brilliant story, with amazing photographs and a screaming headline. “Man!! Our readership is going through the roof tomorrow,” says the editor congratulating the journalist, basking in all the glory.

Activists will scream, “We want Justice!” when you and I can hear their actual thoughts that cry out, “We want attention!!” For their humanitarian work, they lie in wait for their Nobel frickin’ Peace Prizes.

Fashionistas (as I believe they like being called) will unveil a new line of tragedy-wear. “It’s sombre and highly fashionable. You’ll have tear-filled eyes all over you” Can’t you just hear some overfed trout talking about a new boutique and saying that sentence?

But don’t get me wrong... Amid all of this, one perky and peppy woman, with apparently the entire Revlon factory on her face will be running her cute little ass around all over the place clutching a mic (I believe a ‘boom’ is the industry term) asking everyone related to and unrelated to the tragedy the same question... “Aapko kaisa mehsoos ho raha hai?” How do you feel? How do you feel exactly?

‘Care-ists’ (people desperate to show how much they care) will overdo it, ‘Stoic-ists’ (whose image of being unmoved by anything is more important) will underdo it. And then, some idiot will go and write himself a Candle in the Wind and rake in some more of that lovely fat-cash.

Oh speaking of idiots, finally a pseudo-anti-establishmentarian idiot will write a self-serving and smug piece on an obscurely named blog to show how said idiot is ‘above’ anything and everything.

And that is the way life works.

A brilliant social commentator I was fortunate enough to know, who’d just barely dipped her little toes into the waters inhabited by Noam Chomsky, Vir Sanghvi, Walter Cronkite and Teesta Setalvad (which would make for a very odd swimming pool, I know), would probably not agree with me. Instead, she’d probably hear out my side, nodding intently all the while, before proceeding to pick my viewpoint apart with all the precision of an eagle de-fleshing a mouse’s tiny ribcage. And my theory would lie in pieces while my learning would have grown. And she’d still have found time to talk about “how scary yet fascinating this whole Al Qaeda stuff is”.

There isn’t anything to say that hasn’t been said a million times before. Nevertheless...

It’s been an honour, pal.
Fly safe.
And I will see you on the other side.