The Truth

"The truth" is that we cannot handle the truth. If u do not agree to this statement, then the statement is proved right. The easiest way to handle the truth is to look the other side and just think that this did not happen. The more "mature" way is to ignore it totally. The right way is to accept the reality and address the issue. How many of us have had the guts to sit through and see a half hour program on BBC world about the miseries of people on a distant continent called Africa ? Very few. This is not because we don’t have time to see it or we don’t get the channel but because it pains us in more than one way. It pains us to see the stark reality in itself. The other reason is that we are incapable to do anything to help even after knowing that atrocities are happening there. We would any day rather watch a movie with fake beautiful/gorgeous actors with a happy ending. I don’t know if this is the Indian behaviour or is it human behaviour. But we definitely find it very hard if not impossible to accept the truth. Why else do we find it tough to accept the facts when there are losses staring at our faces? Leave Africa. Take examples even closer to home. We have been conditioned with the fact that watching violence in movies can affect children's thinking and that it is so bad that many adults don’t like violent movies. The truth is we all love violence and preach it knowingly or unknowingly, but the fact is that we don’t know how to handle the effects of violence. Because we feel we may cry thinking about the damage the violence has caused and no one wants to be seen as a crying sissy.

We give a rupee to the small kid on the road who is begging and he immediately moves away and we think we have in effect choosen to ignore the problem in the most effiecient way. I am not telling you that this is right or wrong. It is what your concience says to you. People say that violence, sex on tv desensitises us about all these and make us want to do it. True, but without this desensitivity, how are we suppose it address the issue objectively? Being emotional only adds to the problem. But isn't being non-emotional a real characteristic of machines? Do these emotions make us humans indecisive unlike machines who can decide without the emotion part affecting the decision? Or is it only too human to think with emotions? Or is it the two ways of thinking - with and without emotions that make us human? Or is it thinking itself make us human ? I was at my dentist's place and seeing a photo album of some of his operations(Maxilo-facial). It looked gruesome to say the least. Last fortnight my brother was explaining a surgery for removing a tumour from a nose. The way it was done. The way to reach to the tumour region. Both these had some common features like breaking open the nose bone, jaw bone, etc and that too on an anesthesised living human. Sounds too nasty,huh? But the desensitisation of all these so called gruesome scenes is what makes doctors pursue their goal objectively.

It is very hard to see, hear or watch atrocities, violence, bad experiences. But if we don’t desensitise these things to ourleves and learn it, life is going to throw these at us at some time or another and we may be incapable to handle the truth. The parents, teachers and the society in India does not allow us to get direct information as we may not be able to handle the truth. If only had we learnt to take the harsh realities in the right perspectives. If we are not going to learn it, life has it own hard ways to throw it at us and will handle it poorly to say the least.

P.S: Comments, appreciation and brickbats are most welcome.